There is one burning question after sitting through this 140-minute insult to cinema and national intelligence: Did anyone at Yash Raj Films — Aditya Chopra, Shiv Rawail, the writers — actually read the final script before burning hundreds of crores and dragging Alia Bhatt, Sharvari, Bobby Deol and Anil Kapoor into this flaming wreck? Because if they did, and still greenlit it, then the YRF Spy Universe isn’t just creatively bankrupt. It’s actively anti-India in the most tone-deaf, irresponsible way possible.
Alpha is not just bad. It is a disgraceful, logic-free, propaganda-adjacent disaster that somehow manages to make Pakistani ISI look like strategic geniuses while turning the Indian Army and RAW into a bunch of blind, deaf, comically incompetent clowns.
YRF seems to believe that if enough things explode on screen, audiences will stop asking questions.
The Same Tired “Rogue Indian Officer” Garbage… With a Pakistan-Sized Betrayal
Rogue Indian Army officer (Bobby Deol) runs a secret super-soldier program after the government shuts it down. Fine. We’ve seen worse premises.
But then the film decides the real twist is that a Pakistani ISI operative has been embedded inside the Indian military system for decades without anyone noticing. Not months. Not years. Decades.
Indian Army and intelligence agencies — the same ones that are supposed to protect 1.4 billion people — apparently couldn’t spot a foreign mole living, breathing, and operating at the highest levels for decades.
This isn’t clever writing. This is glorifying ISI competence while publicly humiliating Indian intelligence on the biggest possible stage. It’s a film that turns the Indian Army and intelligence agencies into a complete joke. Every Indian soldier turns out to be a Pakistani agent for YRF. They actively chose to portray India’s security apparatus as a sieve that even a half-competent enemy agent can stroll through for 20–30 years. That’s not entertainment. That’s irresponsible filmmaking dressed up in expensive VFX.
This Film Is Literally Dhurandhar Inverted
In Dhurandhar, the Indian spy is the hero infiltrating enemy territory. In Alpha, the Pakistani operative is the one who successfully infiltrates our territory for decades and nearly succeeds in destroying us from within.YRF basically watched Dhurandhar, flipped the nationalities, gave the enemy the win for most of the runtime
The climax where the Pakistani operative finally gets defeated doesn’t erase the previous two hours of “Look how easily ISI can own Indian institutions.” The damage is already done.
The Story Just Doesn’t Add Up
The biggest problem with Alpha is the writing. Every twist feels forced. Every big reveal arrives because the screenplay says it should, not because the story naturally leads there. Characters suddenly become stupid whenever the plot needs them to. Intelligence officers forget how intelligence works. Heroes survive impossible situations simply because they are heroes.
Then comes the biggest twist of all.
The film expects us to believe that a Pakistani operative quietly spends decades inside the Indian military system without anyone figuring it out. Not for a few months. Not for a few years. For decades.
The film doesn’t explain it properly. It doesn’t build towards it. It simply throws the twist at the audience and expects everyone to clap. That is lazy writing.
And not to forget the mandatory scene with barely any clothes on the two female stars. Why does it even have to be there?
Did YRF Simply Reverse Dhurandhar?
The funniest and perhaps the saddest thing about Alpha is that it almost feels like someone watched Dhurandhar and decided to make the exact opposite film.
In Dhurandhar, Ranveer Singh’s character infiltrates Pakistan as an Indian intelligence operative on a mission to neutralise threats to India. In Alpha, Bobby Deol plays a Pakistani operative who infiltrates India’s security establishment with the objective of destroying the country.
The similarities are difficult to miss. One film follows an Indian spy operating deep inside Pakistan. The other follows a Pakistani spy operating deep inside India. One spends time making that premise believable. The other simply expects audiences to accept it.
The irony becomes even more striking in the climax. Dhurandhar brings back Ranveer Singh’s character as the victorious operative. Alpha ends with Bobby Deol’s Pakistani operative being defeated and killed. It almost feels as though YRF took the broad structure of Dhurandhar, flipped the nationalities and expected that to pass for originality.
There is another irony that Bollywood audiences will immediately appreciate. One Deol brother, Sunny Deol, has built much of his career playing fiercely patriotic characters who fight for India. Here, the other Deol brother, Bobby Deol, plays the Pakistani operative trying to bring India down. That contrast is amusing, but it is also one of the few memorable things about the film.
Alia Bhatt Is Painfully Miscast
Alia Bhatt is a phenomenal actress. In the right role, she’s electric. This is not the right role. Watching her tiny frame try to convincingly beat up trained military men twice her size is not empowering — it’s unintentionally hilarious. No amount of choreography or slow-motion can hide the fact that she looks like a schoolgirl who wandered into an army camp and started swinging. The film desperately wants her to be this cold, lethal Alpha weapon. Instead she comes across as a very sincere but completely unconvincing cosplayer.
Everyone Else Deserved Better
Sharvari is given even less to do despite the pre-release hype. Bobby Deol has screen presence but is saddled with a role that’s written so poorly his accent keeps changing mid-scene like he’s doing dialect roulette. Anil Kapoor looks like he’s acting in an entirely different movie. Hrithik’s cameo feels forced.
The YRF Spy Universe used to at least pretend it cared about India winning. Here, everything feels manufactured and hollow. The national stakes are treated like an afterthought. The emotional beats land with the force of wet tissue paper. Dhurandhar was criticised (sometimes fairly) for being too jingoistic. Alpha has the opposite disease: it’s so busy being “edgy” and “twisty” that it forgets to make you give a single damn about India actually winning.
Final Verdict
The saddest part about Alpha isn’t that it’s a bad film. Bollywood has made plenty of bad films. The saddest part is that Alpha genuinely believes it’s something special. It wants to be bigger than Dhurandhar. It wants to look cooler, louder and more stylish but ends up as a regurgitated dump from a beggar begging on the streets of YRF Universe.
Alpha is not a spy thriller. It is expensive, loud, visually polished garbage that actively makes Indian intelligence look like a global laughing stock while accidentally (or deliberately) making ISI infiltration look terrifyingly easy and successful.
It is the exact opposite of what a responsible Indian spy film should be. It is lazy, it is insulting, and it is a creative low point even by recent YRF Spy Universe standards.
If you want to watch a film that respects its audience and actually tries to make an Indian operative’s impossible mission believable, go watch Dhurandhar again.
If you want to watch Indian agencies get repeatedly owned by a Pakistani mole for two hours while Alia Bhatt pretends to be an action star, then by all means waste your money on Alpha.
Just don’t be surprised when the only thing exploding is your patience and any remaining respect for this franchise. Just Avoid. Boycott if possible.
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