‘Animals’ Netflix Review: Ben Affleck Turns A Kidnapping Thriller Into A Sharp Study Of Political Image-Making
Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington star as a Los Angeles mayoral hopeful and his wife, who face a ransom demand on Halloween night that puts their campaign, their marriage and their ethics to the test. Streaming on Netflix from October 9.
There is something curious about the premise of Animals, familiar as it is. It might even be the start of a format. A year after Spike Lee made Highest 2 Lowest, his remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High & Low, Ben Affleck has made his own version of the same story. The differences between Affleck’s film and the earlier ones add up, perhaps enough to justify a new take, but the question that comes to mind while watching is still «why?» One could easily imagine a kind of competition in which filmmakers line up to make their own version of this story, with the prize going to whoever does it best.
What makes this sudden popularity of the Japanese master’s 1963 film doubly strange is that it isn’t built around a formal hook the way Rashomon is. That film’s central idea, a single event seen and told differently by various witnesses, has been revisited more than once. Nor is it Yojimbo, whose structure, a protagonist playing two sides against each other, travels well across genres, as Sergio Leone and Walter Hill both knew. No. The main narrative hook of High & Low is a kidnapping and, above all, the moral dilemma that grows out of it.
Affleck plays Mark Kimball, an ambitious politician running as an independent (he belongs to neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party) for mayor of Los Angeles. Married to Abigail (Kerry Washington) and father to a preteen son named Denny, Mark is stretching himself financially to compete with the big players, and he is still losing. His main goal is to convince the city’s Latino residents that he takes them more seriously than his opponent, a woman of Hispanic descent, so winning over that electorate is his whole strategy. The detail also gives Affleck plenty of chances to speak Spanish, in that very particular accent and tone of his.
Also living in the Kimballs’ enormous mansion in the Hollywood Hills is Cecilia (Adriana Paz), a Mexican woman who works for them as a housekeeper, helping run the house and raise their son. Cecilia has a boyfriend, Ramón (Luis Gerardo Méndez), whose son Héctor has become friends with Denny. When the two boys go out trick-or-treating on Halloween with Cecilia and Ramón, the Kimballs stay home dealing with the problems in their marriage, which is more complicated than it looks. Then a phone call shakes them. The voice, digitally altered, belongs to a man who says he has kidnapped a child. He demands seven million dollars in ransom that same night, and the Kimballs panic.
It is Sam (Steven Yeun), the candidate’s right-hand man, who keeps a cool head. At first he thinks the kidnapping is a hoax, but once he is convinced it’s real, he suggests hiring Dayle Burton (a chilly Gillian Anderson), who for a steep commission of 20 percent of the total will help them negotiate with the kidnapper. The couple agrees, she arrives, and the tense negotiations begin, until a development I won’t reveal changes the terms of the problem. As in Kurosawa’s film, and in Spike Lee’s, the question that arises is what stance to take. Can the Kimballs wash their hands of what is happening? Or do they have to put up seven million dollars, plus 20 percent, and accept whatever that says about them?
From there on, Animals moves away from Kurosawa’s setup, less in the ethical corner it puts its characters in than in the specific mechanics of the plot. Affleck, directing his sixth feature, puts the emphasis on the strained relationship between the couple, since both have secrets that will come out, and on the racial overtones of the case itself. For Mark, it’s impossible to separate what is happening from his campaign: any trouble with the Latino community would end his run for mayor. And that, more than anything else, is what pushes him to see the situation through. In his own way.
Tighter in structure and setting than the other versions, which begin in a big house and then head outdoors, Animals stays for a good while as a chamber drama among about half a dozen characters. Beyond the couple’s conflicts, the director of Argo and The Town deals with what happens to Ramón and Cecilia, and with the maneuvering of Sam and Dayle, who each propose different ways of handling the kidnapper. The main change from the other versions is setting the abduction inside a political campaign, so that the decisions are driven more by public image than by the characters’ ethics.
Affleck tells the story with the skill and conviction he is known for. I still think he’s a better director than actor, and the film’s most dramatic scenes prove it. He handles the story’s own challenges and dilemmas well, and shines especially in the film’s single action sequence. It’s clear that Animals doesn’t reach the level of the original, which is a masterpiece of film history. I also suspect it doesn’t match the impact of Spike Lee’s remake, which, even while staying closer to Kurosawa’s plot, turns out a more personal film, in the way he shoots it and in the sociocultural context he places it in. Affleck is a competent, capable filmmaker, but the film lacks the rawness and intensity of the others.
The most interesting thing the film has to offer lies in its differences: in how Animals looks at the political class and the way it tries to manipulate information and image to win votes, whatever it takes. Along the way, the film makes a series of smart observations about the relationship with Latinos in particular, an unavoidable electoral force in that city. But above all, Affleck is talking about something he knows deeply: the culture of image management, of building narratives for public consumption even when they don’t necessarily match what is actually happening in real life. The kidnapping itself doesn’t concern him much (the film has enormous plot holes on that front). What he cares about is the public narrative the characters invent out of it.
