SnapJolt

Keda’s inability to kill works out well for the wolf in this story. While splinting the gruesome injury that resulted from his cliff adventure, Keda is hunted by wolves who find wounded prey especially tasty. The alpha wolf of the pack is left for dead after Keda injures it, and rather than act out of vengeance, he decides to nurse the wolf back to health. He names it Alpha. Slowly, the duo start to trust one another. Keda becomes more like an alpha wolf, and Alpha turns into a lupine Rin-Tin-Tin.

There’s a pleasant, old-fashioned feel to “Alpha.” It plays like one of those Disneynature movies with sharper edges, a bit more grime and a complete lack of the English language. That’s right, Sony is hiding from you that this film is subtitled, which is not only shifty but insulting to subtitles. The language Keda and his tribe speaks is interesting in that it occasionally doesn’t seem to match the translation. At one point, a character sounds truly impassioned and inspired, speaking for a long time. The result is three subtitled words. Still, credit is due to the filmmakers for staying true to a time before English would have been spoken.

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

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