Directed By Ben Affleck

Starring – Ben Affleck, Gillian Anderson, Kerry Washington

The Plot – When the son of L.A. Mayoral Candidate Milo Bradford is kidnapped, he and his wife have a few hours to come up with the ransom payment. With most of their money spent on his political campaign, they have to get their hands dirty and exposing a side of their lives they never intended to see the light of day.

Rated R for adult language throughout, some violence and sexual references

Animals | Official Trailer | Netflix

POSITIVES

No matter how many times that Akira Kurasawa’s film ‘High and Low’ is remade for another generation, filmmakers still find compelling ways to articulate his themes so timelessly, and with this newest incarnation pertaining to a wannabe mayor seeking competency in the public eye of an upcoming election, the conviction to protect one of his own becomes painstakingly unavoidable, requiring him to risk everything in order to maintain his projected image. Considering this is Affleck’s first directed film since 2023’s ‘Air’, there’s a lot of unanswered questions about what ultimately drew him to this repeatedly exploited story, especially following Spike Lee’s own representation of it in ‘Highest 2 Lowest’, merely a year ago, but Affleck shows a lot of energy and urgency during the movie’s most memorable sequences to keep his approach from feeling completely undercalculated, helping to appraise some much-needed urgency and tension to a lackluster engagement that is egregiously dialogue-driven, in not always the alleviating kind of ways that merit complexity to the conversations. A lot of this rampant registering comes from Affleck’s own experienced eye to render helpless vulnerability to these powerfully blessed characters, as well as enough restraint to the editing, in order to not completely obscure what’s being captured, however just as much influential atmosphere pertains to the unbridled anxiousness of Harry Gregson-Williams’ guitar-gritty themes ratcheting intensity to the corresponding imagery, allowing the spectrum of the stakes to manifest itself throughout some of the harder-hitting instrumental work that the classical composer has rendered, to date. Beyond this, the film is also elevated by some stellar acting to the performances of such a remarkable ensemble, that combine presence and conviction to the design of their characters, particularly Affleck, Kerry Washington, and especially Gillian Anderson, who each approach the opportunity with the necessary radiant emotionality to contextualize the adversity of their conflict. For Affleck and Washington, this effortlessly streamlines a lived-in marital dynamic that bears the wear and tear of an internal disconnect from a life in the public eye, but beyond that unloads these dramatically supercharged moments throughout their interaction with their vocal kidnapper and each other, that magnifies the frustrations and helplessness of their situation, with Affleck particularly emulating some of his deepest and darkest emotional work in over a decade. As legitimately great as Affleck is over the measurement of the material, it’s ultimately Anderson’s mesmerizing turn as a no-bullshit kind of mafioso negotiator who is most endearing throughout the extensive engagement, emulating a cool-as-a-cucumber campy vamp demeanor that feels like a breath of fresh air to so much try-hard emphasis from everyone else. As Dayle Burton, Anderson brings a powerful poise and effortless authority factor to portrayal that makes every scene involving her considerably more watchable than the rest of the film, with Gillian’s aridly dry dependability never withering in the magnitude of the unraveled plot, regardless of the kidnapper constantly feeling in control of the situation, allowing Anderson the necessary grit and stoicism to add another meaningful turn to an already dominant year of a career resurgence for the accomplished actress.

NEGATIVES

The three-headed monster of screenwriters in Affleck, Billy Ray, and Connor O. McIntyre, certainly appraise exploratory avenues to the overwhelming ambition of a bloatedly convoluted screenplay, but fail to realize any of it with the necessary dissectible depth that enacts its talking points with any kind of instinctual purpose, leaving this a flounderingly unfocused finished product of a film that fits comfortably into Netflix’s extensive library of randomly plucked background noise favorites. Part of the problem is certainly that the creativity enlists too much to its creative outline, with not enough time to a 102-minute runtime to coherently flesh them out accordingly, but just as much intrusion stems from so many of these one-dimensional characters feeling so poorly underwritten and lifeless to the dimensionality of the plot, to the point of the audience lacking crucial empathy for the centralized couple, as a result of them illustrated as the living embodiment of privilege. Considering Milo is a political character, there’s a capable opportunity to discuss some of the glaring issues that are currently plaguing Los Angeles, such as wealth disparity and immigration, but aside from Affleck showing off his Spanish speaking skills while communicating with the culture, the script would rather point them out observationally in the imagery without acknowledging them vocally in the dialogue, leaving the film incapable of effectively articulating what sets this version apart from its predecessors, beyond anything other than a sense of voyeuristic vigilantism, that enacts one of the strangest directional deviations between halves in recent memory. As it turns out, the dialogue fares no better at rendering a conscious to these characters, as the entirety of these conversations are not only saturated with political and social buzzwords that feel disconnected from the humanity that Affleck tries to constantly render in these characters, but also clunky expositional impulses that go out of their way to directly explain the plot points and motivations of its characters, such as one out-of-nowhere interaction between Mark and Abby, that deliberately spells out the horniness of its characters. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if done tastefully somewhere away from an all-consuming ransom plot, however it unknowingly paints how self-centered that these protagonists are that the movie projects for its audience, without anything even remotely emulating nuance from their expressed emotionality feeling so on-the-nose with how it’s constantly delivered. If this isn’t enough, there are some tastelessly awkward aspects to the storytelling choices that take some extraneous effort in overlooking, in order to maintain my vested interests to the film, specifically the clunky decision to relegate the film’s only Latino characters to interactions in the Bradford bedroom, leaving them far away the intensity of the action that also directly involves the kidnapping of their son. Because the script constantly sidelines Ceci and Ramon in favor of a marital dispute between Mark and Abby, with only momentary mentions of Ramon’s illegal status in this country, the Latino duo are essentially just devices that serve to grind the gears of Mark’s campaign aspirations, featuring a stomach-churning ending resolution that conveys the depraved magnitude that politicians go to capitalize on any semblance of push at the polls, and by the film undervaluing their situational struggles, in favor of a white and wealthy politician, it will inevitably leave those in the audience seeking any semblance of morality to the material, leaving the advertised transformations of the characters between beginning and end feeling so unjustified and unearned with everything resolving itself comfortably and conveniently. Additionally, because so little is known about the kidnapper, with only incrementally implemented shots showing his default on bills, and his divorce proceedings, it takes away the heart of the story, which usually pertains to down-and-out people seeking desperate measures to overcome their environmental discourse, leaving the film’s accessibility deduced to strategic deliberations throughout the entirety of a first half, which dries up any semblance of suspenseful tension until the moment that Affleck allows the story to leave his character’s lavish mansion. When it does decide to hit the streets, the productional incompetence becomes painstakingly transparent with bizarre visuals and an unforeseen dependency upon Artificial Intelligence that oversaturates the film’s presentational pallet, leaving it feeling tangibly closer to a political advertisement rather than a feature film, both colorfully and artificially. Considering the film is shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, the jarring techniques involving an overreliance of drone equipment and laughably bad visual effects during establishing shots, are disappointing to say the least, crafting a distracting emphasis to the contrasting laziness of the film’s execution that ironically leaves a story pertaining to the transfer of 7-million dollars feeling so cheap in its documenting. The worst of the artificially egregious shots easily pertains to Mark’s shielding of a character being rolled downhill, with a colliding catch that looks like it was realized with an abundance of safety harnesses and studio padding, in order to make the sequence as sanitarily safe as conceivable, in turn, artistically eliciting one of the year’s most rewindable moments that will leave you and your wallet thankful that this movie released straight to Netflix.

OVERALL
Animals represents Ben Affleck’s clunkily chaotic take on a Kurasawa original, which constantly underwhelms its at-home audience with a twisty thriller lacking any of the energy or empathy of the best versions of this overly familiar story. While the performances measure accordingly with the overly anxious world that Affleck has articulated with conviction, the scraps from the shallow screenplay and glaring productional flaws keep this beast chained with remedial restraint, cementing an overstuffed and unimaginable experience that collapses under the weight of its own insatiable indulgences.

My Grade: 4.3 or D-