Alpha (2018)
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Alpha Movie Review
Alpha is a 2018 historical adventure film directed by Albert Hughes and starring Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s such a good, very pleasant and gorgeous looking flick.
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“Pain will journey with us“
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It follows a young hunter who befriends an injured wolf during the last ice age. It’s a tale of the first dog as it follows a wolf literally becoming a dog in behavior. In that way, it made for a fascinating, wonderful experience and it’s crazy that it took this long to tell this great, though admittedly not historical story as it is not known how it all really went down.
But nonetheless, the movie is a tremendous historical adventure as it’s so historically accurate in its surroundings and details while also being phenomenally executed in its thrilling and consistently involving, highly grounded in reality action scenes. The action is so great that it did not bother me how excessive it was. And it’s still very much a spirited, wonderfully varied in scenery adventure story.
Kodi Smit-McPhee is surprisingly good in the main role and the other hunters are all quite memorable in their smaller, but effective roles. Their language is fictional, but interesting nonetheless. Of course the wolf/dog is great and the relationship between the two is both important and beautiful. The other animals are all very well portrayed too and I loved all those animal attack sequences as they were very immediate in danger and quite thrilling.
Alpha most definitely lacks in terms of sophistication as the themes are non-existent and it relies so heavily on excitement, audio-visuals and spectacle that it left a lot of room for some interesting themes to be explored. And it’s also very much influenced by ‘Apocalypto’ in its thrilling action, highly stylized visuals and an immensely realistic historical approach.
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But there’s no denying its cinematic merits. Alpha does not only sound great thanks to amazing sound design, but it’s also absolutely amazing when it comes to its photography. It is a realistic, but also somewhat stylized and artistic even movie which features a plethora of highly memorable scenes with gorgeous imagery of the ice, the animals and the night sky in particular. The direction is also pretty strong.
Alpha is very obviously influenced by ‘Apocalypto’ in its approach and it does not have much in its mind, but it’s such a spirited adventure that is highly enjoyable and epic how cinematic it is. Its realistic approach made it a strong historical piece, but its thrilling action made it highly entertaining. The film is well acted and directed, but above all else phenomenally scored and simply gorgeously shot with a plethora of outstanding, beautiful imagery at display. It’s a wonderful story of a wolf who became the very first dog.
