Alpha

Alpha

This is your ordinary “boy and his dog” story (if the dog were a wolf) set 20,000 years ago. It’s sold as being about the “origins of man’s best friend,” but it feels more like an ad for wolves. Your kids are going to want one after they see “Alpha.” The movie should have just been called “PUH-PEEEEEE!!!” because, judging by the oohing and aahing at my IMAX 3D screening, people couldn’t wait to project their warm and fuzzy domesticated canine feelings onto a wild animal who would eat them without a second thought.

But let’s deal with the cards we’re given here. We meet the boy, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), bison hunting with his tribe. He is the son of Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), the “alpha” of their people. Great things are expected from Keda, but he’s sensitive and killing animals doesn’t sit well with him. “Life is for the strong!” his father scolds him when he fails to finish off a wounded animal. “You must earn it!” During what will be one of many well-staged and visually arresting hunts, Keda hesitates long enough for his prey to get away; it also sends him plummeting over a steep cliff.

As Keda falls through nothingness, “Alpha” suddenly flashes back to a week before. We assume that Keda’s fall is part of this movie’s climax it actually seems like it could be but really it’s what sets everything in motion in director Albert Hughes’ prehistoric adventure yarn. In one of many quiet moments during this flashback within an already quiet moment, Tau tells Keda about the alpha wolf the animal who leads the pack and whom all other wolves defer to and some of his tribe’s rituals that will become important bits of shorthand later. Albert Hughes and his editor, Sandra Granovsky, use a nice flurry of quick cuts from the opening hunting sequence to bring us back to Keda’s seemingly fatal plunge.

The ledge on which Keda lands is too far away for Tau to reach him, so he mourns his son and moves on. Indeed, Keda’s situation seems hopeless trying to climb in either direction means almost certain death but screenwriter Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt finds a way out that’s both gleefully unpredictable and absolutely preposterous. There are more scenes like this in “Alpha,” moments where faith and suspension of disbelief are the only things that will carry you through, but the pace is always brisk enough that you don’t dwell on them for long before another peril befalls our heroes.

Keda’s inability to kill proves fortunate for the wolf here. While splinting the gruesome injury he sustained in his cliff dive, Keda is hunted by wolves (wounded prey tastes better). After Keda injures it, the alpha wolf of their pack is left for dead but rather than acting out of vengeance, he chooses to nurse it back to health. He names it Alpha. Once they get over their initial distrust of each other not an easy thing for either party they slowly bond: Keda starts becoming more like an alpha wolf; Alpha morphs into a lupine Rin-Tin-Tin.

There’s a nice old-fashioned quality to “Alpha.” It feels like one of those Disneynature movies, but with sharper edges; a bit more grime and a complete lack of the English language. That’s right, Sony isn’t telling you that this movie is subtitled, which is not only shady but also insulting to subtitles. The language Keda and his tribe speaks is neat in that it doesn’t always appear to match the translation. There’s an instance where a character seems very impassioned and inspired, speaking for quite some time. The end result reads three subtitled words. However, kudos are deserved by the filmmakers for sticking with a time before English would have been spoken.

The best thing about “Alpha” is its imagery which is stunning in IMAX. Hughes, his cinematographer Martin Gschlacht and their visual effects team create a world that is as beautiful as it is dangerous: often framing the characters in the center of a broad, seemingly endless landscape. The water here is preternaturally blue; the sky chock full of stars; the ground unforgiving whether covered in desert sand or brutal ice. The most intense scene has Keda trapped under a frozen lake he swims furiously while Alpha tracks him from above. There’s a majesty to the images in this sequence that will leave audiences breathless: This could play at museums forever once it leaves general release.

Smit-McPhee gives an excellent performance here, showing the evolution of his character without much dialogue. He has a genuine rapport with whatever it is playing Alpha (is the wolf live, or is it Memorex I mean CGI?) Kids over eight will get a kick out of this one; so will their parents because “Alpha” is a credible adventure movie with an ever so slightly gooey undercurrent of sentiment. It will play better for dog lovers than cat people.

This is a story about a beta boy who learns to be an alpha wolf, and an alpha wolf who becomes his subservient pet. It’s a charming story, for sure. Unless you’re a wolf.

Watch Alpha For Free On Gomovies.