Directed by Ben Affleck — Screenplay by Connor O. McIntyre, Billy Ray, and Ben Affleck.
Earlier this year, I reviewed Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, an occasionally quite exciting action-thriller with Ben Affleck in a prominent role. Although I liked that film, I was even more excited about his next Netflix project: Ben Affleck’s sixth directorial feature, Animals. Affleck has long proven himself a genuinely terrific director of unforgettable films such as Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo. I also had a good time with his previous directorial feature, Air, in 2023. Another kidnapping thriller from the director of Gone Baby Gone sounded like such a good project. Unfortunately, although there are good elements found in Animals, it is a considerably inferior kidnapping flick. Honestly, I was surprised by how this just felt like another remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High & Low.
Ben Affleck’s Animals follows Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate, who is getting into the last crucial days of his political campaign, which he has invested more money into than his wife knows he has. His wife, Abigail (played by Kerry Washington), is secretly having an affair with a man named Ron (played by Ray Fisher), who has left his partner for Abigail. While secrets partly define their marriage, Mark and Abigail are about to be in for a shock. One evening, their son is out trick-or-treating with the family housekeeper, Cecilia (played by Adriana Paz), and the son of Cecilia’s boyfriend, Ramon (played by Luis Gerardo Méndez), an illegal immigrant. That’s when Mark receives a phone call from a kidnapper, who says that he has kidnapped Mark and Abigail’s son, and he is demanding $7 million for his safe return. While the parents panic, Mark’s campaign manager, Sam (played by Steven Yeun), informs them that a mysterious woman named Dayle (played by Gillian Anderson) can bring them the money required for a hefty fee and help them navigate the situation without involving law enforcement and the media. After going into a binding partnership with Dayle, the reality of the details involving the kidnapping changes. Now Mark and Abigail have to decide if that changes anything for them in their resolve to get the kid to safety.
Although character details have clearly been changed, anyone with an understanding of what High & Low is will recognize immediately that this film is borrowing from it heavily. In fact, I would say it feels like another American modern remake of the Kurosawa classic, like last year’s Spike Lee film Highest 2 Lowest. Unlike Lee’s film, Animals, strangely, features no ‘based on’ or ‘inspired by’ credit linking it to the Kurosawa film, or the novel — Evan Hunter’s King’s Ransom — on which it is based. I say strangely because I don’t think that Affleck — or the other credited co-writers — have done enough differently to set it apart from its obvious inspirations. It plays like an unoriginal modern remake, only with disappointingly little depth concerning class commentary that other versions of this story have sought to emphasize. Yes, the film remains a narrative about morality, but its thematic aspirations are limited, unfortunately. There was something to work with here, given the focus on Mark Kimball’s political aspirations and what demographic he needs to sway to win the upcoming election. But while it is there and ready to potentially elevate the film, Affleck doesn’t do anything particularly interesting or deep with it.
I was already mixed on and disappointed by Highest 2 Lowest when I reviewed it, but now, with time, my disillusionment with the film has only gotten more pronounced. And yet, I have to give it some credit in this review of Animals, because at least that remake had more of a sense of style. Even if it didn’t work, at least Spike Lee did some unconventional and artistic things in his remake. Although I remain a big fan of Affleck, I was really disappointed by how formally indistinct Animals felt. It is quite bland, at the end of the day. Are there some highlights? For sure, when the panic sets in, the camera appropriately moves around the character so as to further emphasize the restless anxiety of it all. But that’s about it.
In addition to feeling quite generic, Animals also suffers from the way characters are written. All of the characters feel like thinly drawn archetypes, and even the film’s most mysterious character — an ice queen-type played by Gillian Anderson — is written in such a way that she speaks in these quotes and remarks that feel awkwardly prepared and inauthentic. Frankly, I think the only characters that ever feel remotely authentic are the ones portrayed by Méndez and Paz. Affleck usually gets very good performances out of his cast, and he’s even turned in some strong performances himself, even when he’s pulling double duty. But he doesn’t succeed here. His scenes with Kerry Washington, which should be the emotional backbone of the film to a certain extent, feel inert and fail to build an emotional investment in their predicament. There are emotional reactions performed by Affleck and Washington that simply do not work as intended. Meanwhile, Anderson and Yeun do what they can with their underwritten parts. Yeun’s part feels particularly small, which is a shame.
But even though the film was already flawed prior to the third act, it was nonetheless quite watchable, and I remained curious about how Affleck’s version of the oft-told story would conclude. Unfortunately, the final act fell completely flat. There’s a moment of action where Affleck has to try to catch someone, which is unintentionally funny because it simply looks off. A character is essentially launched toward him, and the visual effects are completely unconvincing. It’s not the only awkwardly and unintentionally comical moment in this section of the film, which also features a closing montage that stretches credulity somewhat and feels underexplained. The film also feels so strangely disinterested in the identity of the kidnapper that it feels like you’ve missed something when the film ends. So, on the whole, Ben Affleck’s Animals represents a disappointing misstep for its central star, who also happens to be the film’s director, and one of its writers. It is a bland, unoriginal, and underwritten thriller that fails to pull the whole thing together in a satisfying way.
4 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
