11/30/2022 0 Comments Alpha movieStill, Smit-McPhee and Chuck (when not replaced by pixels) are quite good, and Keda’s evolution into shrewd, toughened survivor is believable enough. There are some other noticeable gaffes: Both Keda and his pop have nicely manicured fingernails, while everyone’s clean white teeth hint that the tribe’s medicine woman is damn good at dental hygiene as well. But it does take one out of the movie, making the intended emotional payoffs (and there are a few) not as handkerchief-friendly as Hughes probably imagined. The extensive use of digital trickery is, to be fair, probably what’s needed to bring southern France and Spain in the Ice Age to life. The surface of a lake, a windswept mountain range, and the animals themselves, such as a ghostly pack of hyenas or a menacing black tiger to Alpha, share flashes of visual splendor with shots in which they look like escapees from a video game. It veers from hard-edged survival drama to something that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Disney family adventure, while the visuals range from moments of stark beauty to cringeworthy snatches of sketchy CG. And so he gradually nurses himself and the wolf back to health, or at least the ability to stand and walk, and the two form a relationship and team that becomes the heart of the story.Īt this point, Alpha becomes a straightforward tale of endurance and friendship while settling into a vaguely irritating pattern of inconsistencies. Attacked by a pack of hungry wolves, he wounds one of them badly but cannot bring himself to kill it earlier in the film, we were shown that Keda is not quite the ruthless hunter he needs to be if he wants to fill his belly. It’s no spoiler to say that Keda escapes becoming birdfeed and winds up back on the ground, with a broken foot and abandoned for dead by his father and the tribe. Their quest eventually leads to the sequence the film opened with, which leaves poor Keda stuck and apparently dead on a ledge halfway down the cliffside and accessible only to hungry vultures. We spend much of its first half hour getting to know Keda, his father and mother (the latter, played by Natassia Malthe, doesn’t think Keda is ready to go on the hunt) and the ways of their tribe, who must hunt the “great beast” to avoid starvation during the endless winter. #ALPHA MOVIE MOVIE#Then the movie flashes back a week (a typical move these days with filmmakers and an unnecessary one: why not just start the movie there?). Watch ALPHA on Blu-ray or DVD, right here from Amazon! Keda speaks a primitive language and traverses lands both forbidding and beautiful with only the wolf–christened Alpha by the boy and played by the undeniably adorable Chuck–at his side. In Alpha, he confidently asks viewers to follow Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a young member of an advanced Cro-Magnon tribe known as the Solutrean (that’s also the original title of the movie itself, which was shot more than two years ago). Hughes isn’t afraid to genre-jump, going from urban drama ( Menace II Society) to period horror ( From Hell) to post-apocalyptic sci-fi ( Book of Eli) with relative ease. But the movie is both impressive and vexing as Hughes’ genuinely ambitious vision is hampered by stock plot points and inconsistent visuals. Dog lovers will be all over this movie, and as long as younger viewers can handle the intensity of the peril, families will enjoy it too.It’s been a while since we had an old-fashioned caveman movie (for lack of a better term), and kudos to director Albert Hughes for conceiving of one with Alpha, the story of a prehistoric teen who makes his way back to his family across a vast, treacherous landscape with the help of a wolf he establishes a bond with. But Alpha is ultimately all about Keda and Alpha. Jóhannesson, as the father, is also quite good. It's not a documentary it's a boy-and-his-dog survival adventure, and it's plenty involving on that score. That said, authenticity isn't the key here. You completely buy him speaking the film's invented language and enduring all the trials he faces with his wolf friend. Perhaps more importantly, so is his empathy - you sees how this particular Cro-Magnon teen might have mercy on a wounded predator, then be receptive to allying with it. As Keda, his courage and drive are entirely believable. And McPhee is a remarkably sympathetic actor. Albert Hughes, directing without his brother Allen for the first time, uses extensive CGI to create a prehistoric setting that's simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, primal and fantastic. Alpha presents a plausible take on the origins of the human-canine bond - but more importantly, it's an absorbing survival tale with an appealing main character and a wolf that everyone will root for. This is a ripping good adventure yarn with memorable visuals and an original premise and feel.
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