“Alpha”– Movie Review

Recently, I attended an advanced screening of the new action-adventure, “Alpha”.

Synopsis

When an Ice Age hunting trip goes awry, a teenager gets separated from the group – but once he’s befriended by a stray wolf, can the two help save each other survive?

Story

Twenty thousand years ago, the planet Earth experienced what has come to be known as The Ice Age.  Somewhere on the European continent during that time, there was a small village whose inhabitants needed to go out to hunt for food for their family.  The leader of the tribe, Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), chose his best weapon-makers to join him on this expedition – including his teenage son, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee).  There is some degree of trepidation around this choice not only due to the boy’s relative inexperience but also because Keda does not exactly have a reputation of being fierce.

During their journey, Keda suffers an accident and winds up being separated from the group; alone and injured, he must figure out a way to survive as he tries to find his way back to the village.  Since Keda’s hunting skills are underdeveloped, scrounging for food is a challenge and he has to settle for anything he can get. Keda also has to fend off various predatory beasts who wish to attack him either because they believe he’s a threat or because they want to use him as a food source.  One such experience is with a wolfpack; unable to fight them off, Keda climbs a tree to evade them.

Hours later when the pack has given up on their prey, Keda descends and upon returning to the ground finds one of the wolves has remained; discovering that it is badly injured and no longer a danger, he proceeds to nurse the animal back to health.  Over time, the two seem to develop something of a trust between each other and the natural animosity gradually dissipates. When the wolf has an opportunity to return to its pack, it instead stays with Keda and together, they overcome various life-threatening adventures as the wolf, who by now Keda has named Alpha, follows him back to the village.  But as a blizzard hits, will the two be able to survive long enough to return to civilization?

Review

Although “Alpha” is only an hour and a half in length, it feels much longer due to its slow pacing and the fact that it takes quite a while for the story to get started.  Additionally, Keda keeps facing one adversity after another so you just want to scream, “Enough already, we get it!”. At that point, it almost turns into a self-parody.  This also begs the question about what was the father doing – or perhaps more to the point, what was he not doing?  As far as we can tell from the film itself, the father never once tried to look for his boy, which makes scenes where he appears to get all emotional about the assumed loss of his son all the more suspect. 

The second act of any movie is typically its longest; structurally, this is handled by the screenwriter asking the question, “What are the other characters up to?”.  This is done to keep the main character from being forced to carry too much of the middle of the film, potentially causing the audience to zone out at best or get sick of him/her at worst.  What might’ve helped “Alpha” from feeling longer than its actual running time may have been including scenes of the villagers or what the hunters did after they were separated from the boy (as mentioned above, the father didn’t even seem to make any kind of an effort –it appears he quickly gave up and just went home). 

One minor point has to do with the dialog.  Since this takes place in Europe during the Ice Age, the characters appear to be speaking a long-extinct language – possibly Solutrean in its origin, which might make it a French/Spanish variation.  In any event, it will not be immediately recognizable to the audience – it’ll pretty much just sound like a bit of gibberish. This is why the dialog is translated to English in its subtitles. While this might not be considered a deal-breaker for the cineaste who’s seen many foreign films, it could turn out to be something of an impediment if the filmmakers are trying to reach a wider audience.   

IMDB