Alpha

Alpha
Image: Patrick (left) and IVF Australia's latest campaign.

Alpha starts off some 20,000 odd years ago attempting to take us to the last days of the Ice Age.

It is about a boy named Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Keda it seems has an objection to killing and has an overly emotional family. Perfectly normal in the current day, but in times when apparently the motto “survival of the fittest” never rang truer, it just seems too unrealistically jarring. On a hunting expedition with his father Tau (Johannes Haukur Johannesson), Keda is separated from his tribe, and must now face his fears and become an Alpha male.

Storyline sounds familiar? Yes, it is quite predictable and given that the boy has been ‘taken’ by the elements, it might have been more entertaining to perhaps get Liam Neeson to go find him.

While coming to terms with the dangers lurking around him Keda starts an unlikely friendship with a wolf where the duo literally swap personalities with the boy turning into an alpha male, and the wolf going from the leader of the wolf pack to a tame, domesticated animal. Besides being visually stunning and containing messages of hope and survival especially for the young audiences it is basically a far-fetched Disney-like tale with more of a bark and less of a bite.

★★ ½

Reviewed by Joseph Rana

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