PLOT: A Los Angeles mayoral candidate (Ben Affleck), who has blown his family fortune on the race, discovers that his teen son has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. With the help of a shady operator (Gillian Anderson), the candidate and his wife (Kerry Washington) are forced to make a series of decisions that put all of their beliefs to the test.
REVIEW: Remember last year when Spike Lee remade Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low with Highest 2 Lowest? Well, Ben Affleck might not have caught that news, with his latest, Animals, having basically the exact same premise. Rather than being set in the music industry and New York, as in Lee’s remake, Affleck’s movie is set in L.A. and tackles politics, but the story is nearly beat for beat the same. It hinges on the idea that Affleck’s Mark Kimball is willing to sacrifice everything he has to save his son, but when it turns out the kidnappers got the wrong kid—taking a child looked after by his Mexican housekeeper (Adriana Paz) and her undocumented worker boyfriend (Luis Gerardo Méndez)—things get more complicated. So yeah—it’s the same basic story, although the denouement, to be fair to Affleck and co-writers Billy Ray and Connor O. McIntyre, is fairly clever.
Otherwise, Animals is surprisingly uninspired for a movie Affleck directed, as his directorial efforts are usually bangers. Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo, Air—even Live by Night—are all really solid movies. Animals feels like just another streaming movie, which is perhaps why Netflix is giving it a low-key release, at least compared to their last Affleck release, The Rip, which was a big hit for them.
Ben Affleck casts himself as the potential next mayor of L.A., playing a populist independent who’s a few points short of a theoretical win. He’s inherited a lot of money from his father, but his political advisor (well played by Steven Yeun) has gotten him to put literally every penny he has into the election, although he at least still has the sprawling home he shares with his wife. She has a secret, too, in that she’s having an affair (with a character played in a quick cameo by Affleck’s former Justice League co-star Ray Fisher). But when the child is kidnapped, he’s faced with the prospect of having to liquidate his only remaining asset, which he’s willing to do for his own son, but is a trickier question when it becomes clear another child has been taken.
Affleck plays Kimball as a relatively good person, although his stated beliefs don’t always hold up under pressure—especially as he’s faced with financial ruin. Yet he keeps our sympathy because he’s ultimately someone who will at least try to do the right thing when put to the test. Kerry Washington has a more thinly written role as his wife, who is starting to believe she’s just a prop in his election campaign, but has her own secrets and flaws. Perhaps the showiest role goes to Gillian Anderson as the white-suited, English-accented fixer who promises to solve all their problems—for a hefty fee and collateral on the couple she could use in the future should the need arise.
The acting is fine, but the film can’t help but feel achingly familiar—at least if you’ve seen High and Low or Highest 2 Lowest. Lee’s remake got pretty awful reviews, but at least he took a big swing with his version. Affleck’s feels dumbed down for a streaming audience, with it being the kind of movie that’s not too taxing and could be considered second-screen content. He has cinematography by his The Town DP, Robert Elswit, but it looks like a movie made for small screens, and some of the drone shots of Los Angeles are repetitive. There’s also the question of AI, with Affleck admitting he used it here and there in the movie (with his own company selling to Netflix), and I couldn’t help but second-guess any impressive shot I saw—something that totally took me out of the movie.
Had I not been familiar with either High and Low or Highest 2 Lowest, I might have found Animals a bit more compelling than I did, but even still, it plays out like a pretty generic thriller with less political intrigue than you’d think. It feels like a quickie Netflix thriller, and not one of the streamer’s better recent movies. It’s a rare misfire from Affleck as a director—it’s not a bad film per se, but it’s not a terribly interesting one.
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