Alpha (2018)
(On Cable TV, March 2019) For all the smack talk that movie reviewers and jaded viewers say about Hollywood and its propensity to always do the same thing, there’s always a stream of odd deviations from the norm if you know where to look. Alpha is most definitely not a major studio-backed film, but it was released by Sony—albeit with a year-long delay that may betray the uneasiness of its marketing department. After all, how do you sell a movie set 20,000 years ago, without supernatural or science-fictive elements, and not even featuring a modern language? These complications approach art-house territory in terms of audience appeal and you have to admire the audacity of writer-director Albert Hughes in even proposing the project. But that’s underselling the strengths of Alpha, which is (at its best) a rousing adventure story, featuring a boy and his proto-dog trying to get back to his tribe after they’ve left him for dead. The film is a roller-coaster ride of prehistoric action sequences. Aptly balancing realism with action-movie thrills, it’s an intriguing glimpse at the kinds of heroics that were required by our ancestors. The heavily processed cinematography is terrific, making use of IMAX-grade image quality and numerous virtual sequences. It says a lot without that many subtitles. The Big Idea here is to depict how human domesticated wolves into becoming dog companions, so I expect Alpha to strike a chord for dog lovers of all stripes. (I wonder how a similar film about cats domesticating humans would go. Probably an animated comedy set in Egyptian granaries.) While I do think that Alpha’s appeal remains limited (I found long stretches of it very long to sit through), I like that a film taking so many chances and yet sticking to a certain realism exists: we need more than the usual formulas in order to keep things fresh, and it’s this difference that makes Alpha special.