What’s It About

Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck), a high-profile candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, and his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) receive an ominous phone call revealing that their son has been abducted. As the couple scrambles to raise the ransom money, they are forced to confront hidden, dark secrets from their past. A specialist fixer named Dayle (Gillian Anderson) steps in to help, explaining that Mark’s political position and buried secrets create dangerous leverage, turning the rescue mission into an intense psychological test of their marriage.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Another movie about a kid getting snatched? Yeah, we’ve been here before. A whole lot. Hollywood has run this play every way possible, from wild comedies like Raising Arizona to straight-faced dramas like Ransom. This year alone we’ve had a handful of movies about missing or stolen kids, and next month the new Hunger Games movie, Sunrise on the Reaping, is about to pull 48 children away from their families just to make them fight each other. So the question is simple. What does Netflix’s Animals bring to a plate that’s already piled high? Not much. Honestly, the best thing about it is that it wraps up in an hour and 46 minutes. Here’s the setup. Ben Affleck plays Mark Kimball, a rich man running for mayor of Los Angeles. His wife, Abigail (Kerry Washington), wants no part of the campaign, and it’s slowly eating their marriage alive. Their son, Denny (Christopher Woodley), is a sweet kid everybody loves. It’s Halloween night, just days before the election, and Denny heads out trick-or-treating with his new buddy Hector (Jacob Estrada) while the family housekeeper, Cecilia (Adriana Paz), keeps an eye on them. Cecilia is also the partner of Hector’s dad, Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez), a laborer who’s undocumented. Of course the two boys are the same height, same build, and wearing the exact same costume with their faces covered. You already know where this is headed. Cecilia comes back to the mansion with no kids, and everybody figures Denny got grabbed. Spoiler next: After a ransom amount has been made and shady people have been called, Denny strolls through the front door, and Mark and Abigail start celebrating, until the phone continues to ring and they find out Hector is the one tied up somewhere. The kidnapper wants $7 million in cash by midnight, says he’s watching the house, and warns them not to call nobody. Mark’s campaign manager, Sam Allison (Steven Yeun), says he knows a guy who knows a woman, and in walks Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), a shadowy fixer who promises to bring the boy home safe for a non-refundable $1.4 million on top of the ransom. Now comes the big question. Will Mark torch his whole mayor dream to save a boy who ain’t his? That’s a strong hook. But if we being real, it’s basically High and Low, the Akira Kurosawa classic that Spike Lee just remade last year as Highest 2 Lowest. The movie never says it out loud, but anybody who’s seen either one is gonna catch that weird déjà vu early. The only fresh twist is making the main man a politician instead of a business boss about to pull off a hostile takeover. Mark already sank most of his money into a desperate ad blitz to rescue his falling poll numbers, so the pressure is on no matter which way he leans. Now, Affleck can direct. Let’s not play. The Town is a crime thriller you can watch fifty times and still feel your chest tighten. Argo won Best Picture. Even his smaller work, like the Nike story Air, proves he understands people and can tell an old-school story the way Hollywood barely bothers to anymore. His very first time behind the camera, Gone Baby Gone, still stands as one of the best movies about right and wrong getting all tangled up. So when you tell me Ben Affleck made a kidnapping movie about money, class, and a man’s conscience, I’m supposed to be locked in. Instead, we got a bargain-bin thriller stuffed with political buzzwords, loud arguments, and characters who barely feel human. It sits right next to Live by Night as his most lifeless work, and that stings. The film is ultimately disappointing because it has little to say. Even though Mark wants to promote the plight of the less fortunate people of the city, he’s quick to forget about his noble intentions when it comes to his own safety. Great concept! Although it’s unfortunate that the screenplay written by Connor O. McIntyre, Billy Ray, and Affleck just scratches the surface when it comes to the hypocrisy involved here. Instead of developing the character struggle, the screenplay just presents a sequence of decisions that can be easily guessed before the popcorn is finished. Cecilia and Ramon catch the worst of it, and they should’ve been the heart of this whole thing. Ramon is a man forced to keep his head down and his mouth shut, and he’s twice the man Mark will ever be. Still, the movie handles him and Cecilia like props for Mark’s crisis instead of people with their own fear and fury. The Kimballs act close with Cecilia while showing her almost zero respect. Maybe that’s meant as a point about wealth and power, but it mostly lands as rich folks being jerks. You end up rooting for nobody. All the other actors were shortchanged too. Washington’s Abigail is just misused and becomes a cheater, which seems to be the only character trait present. The scene with Ray Fisher’s character wasn’t even shot properly. We see him in the movie for, what, five seconds? Anderson’s character, Dayle, is supposed to be this scary fixer, but she doesn’t do much other than taking advantage of her reputation. She speaks a lot of nonsense, probably just because. Two brilliant actresses with hardly any time to shine in the film, as well as the subplot involving Mark’s grumpy dad and his money, seem to be left untouched. No idea what the point of it was. And the visuals don’t amaze. Robert Elswit is the cinematographer of Nightcrawler and Inherent Vice, and he made LA look alive, gritty, and genuine. Here, the city is lifeless, drenched in that cheap, shiny digital glare that always sucks the atmosphere out of the place. Affleck is not a novice director, yet in this movie, he does not try to build any scenes. Instead, things just happen by themselves. The conflicts should be grand but people shout without creating suspense. The worst part is the villain. The kidnapper is so undercooked that when the reveal finally lands, you’re sitting there like, wait, who is this man again? I had to scroll back to the opening just to find him. That’s weak writing, weak editing, and weak direction all shaking hands. Then Affleck slaps on an ending so smug and cynical that it smothers whatever “we’re all connected” message he was reaching for. Animals is the kind of Netflix movie made for folks scrolling their phones, not because it’s confusing, but because almost nothing in it earns your eyes.

OUR RATING – A TIME WAISTING 3