The YRF spy universe has given us strong, sexy, globetrotting agents who saved the nation while sashaying around in foreign locations and charming the ladies. So, when the studio announced Alpha, the Spy Universe’s first film to be headlined by women and to feature its first Indian female agents, there was naturally a lot of excitement.In six previous films, seasoned agents Tiger (Salman Khan), Pathaan (Shah Rukh Khan) and Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) have performed stunts that defy the laws of physics and logic itself. Perhaps the fact that they were men or A-list movie stars meant that we were expected to suspend our disbelief and watch them dance on a beach, blow up buildings and outrun a high-speed train without ever questioning any of it.Spoilers aheadBut in Alpha, the latest film in the franchise, Sita (Alia Bhatt) and Durga (Sharvari) have special Spidey senses and what is portrayed as an abnormal amount of physical strength for a woman, because their father injected their mother with the Alpha serum while she was pregnant.We have seen female agents in Spy Universe films before. Zoya (Katrina Kaif) and Rubina (Deepika Padukone), both ISI agents, were highly skilled and independent women who could match their male counterparts on the dance floor and in battle. Isn’t it strange then that when the time came to introduce Indian women as members of the Spy Universe, YRF chose to give them a complicated backstory involving synthetic drugs to lend these women credibility in an action film? Alia’s Sita and Sharvari’s Durga are filmed like exotic beings who can wield weapons and kill men. They are viewed entirely from a male gaze, with the camera lingering on their finely chiselled bodies as they don bikinis while being on the run, dance in the streets of Spain, or in an end credits song that is a textbook example of objectification. Even when we see Sita as a young 18-year-old killing for the first time, she is partially undressed and has seemingly tried to seduce a man before murdering him.I was also disappointed to see that Sita’s and, subsequently, Durga’s story is entirely shaped by the men around them. After a man genetically enhanced her in utero, Sita is kidnapped by rogue Indian soldier Fateh Singh Lakhawat (Bobby Deol), who raises her in captivity, experiments on her serum-infused blood and trains her to kill people he has labelled traitors. Lest you miss the on-the-nose Ramayana subtext, Alia Bhatt proceeds to spell it out for you at least twice. Clearly, having all those extra powers has not helped Sita make her own decisions or question why the man she calls Baba (father) is so bloodthirsty. Or why she, a full-grown woman, has physical strength but no mind of her own. That is, until Fateh’s subordinate, Dr Verghese (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), reveals this seeming patriot’s evil intentions to her.Also Read – Alia Bhatt’s Alpha goes rogue to pander to a post-Dhurandhar landscapeOnce the truth has been mansplained to her, she goes into Jason Bourne mode, looking to get revenge for the fact that Fateh lied to her and ruined her childhood by holding her captive. But even when she finds her purpose, the film does not trust a woman to make her own way in the world. Instead of allowing the protagonist to chart her own path and battle impossible odds to accomplish her goal, she is shown taking instructions from one man after another. Fateh’s erstwhile mentor and the current R&AW chief, Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor), steps in to give her ‘guidance’ on what she should do next. This is literally after she blows up an entire training facility and kills dozens of men single-handedly. Instead of giving Sita and Durga useful tips on what they can do to stop Fateh and let them handle the challenge, Vikrant directs them to another man, the Spy Universe’s Ethan Hunt, Kabir.Story continues below this adKabir flies around, dodging bullets with his robe, but leaves you wondering why he is in this film in the first place. I kept waiting for Kabir to drop some pearls of wisdom or for the film to have a real moment of emotional connection between a veteran agent and a future one, but it never came. Even in the film’s climax, when Sita pins down the antagonist, she is given permission and a weapon to kill him by Vikrant, making her the most ‘managed’ member of the Spy Universe. Tiger absconds, Pathaan rebels, Kabir goes rogue, but Sita and Durga need constant male supervision to succeed.The cherry on this half-baked cake is the force-fitted angle of patriotism, Pakistani moles and cross-border infiltration that seems like a reaction to Dhurandhar’s success rather than a part of the original story. In a world where we need the enemy to have a certain religious identity and nationality for him or her to be considered truly evil, Alpha forces a last-minute mission onto Sita and Durga’s shoulders. Suddenly, this saga of two sisters taking on the man who wronged their family or a cautionary tale on the dangers of toxic patriotism, devolves into an Indo-Pak battle where an Indian woman named Sita kills a Pakistani Ravan.Also Read – Alpha movie review: A spy film so dull, Alia Bhatt-Sharvari-Hrithik Roshan can’t rescue itPerhaps the real problem is that Alpha is unclear about what kind of story it wants to tell. Is it an origin story of how a girl raised in captivity becomes the unlikely soldier her country needs? Is it the story of a female soldier who escapes an evil man performing experiments on her to find a new purpose? Or is it the story of an estranged family finding its way back to each other against the background of an action thriller? Sadly, the makers forget, amidst the frenzied action sequences, that we also need to form an emotional connection with the protagonist and root for her to succeed. In the case of Alpha, this never happens. Despite the actors making valiant attempts to lend credibility to the script, one can’t help but wonder if the time has come for the YRF Spy Universe to either wind up operations or shift gears and move on from bikinis, bombs, beach sides and bluster to focus instead on creating stories that don’t ridicule our collective intelligence.