Ben Affleck has spent the last decade building a decent resume behind the camera — The Town, Argo and Air all showed a filmmaker with a good eye and a knack for performances. His latest directorial effort, Animals, now streaming on Netflix, was meant to continue that run. Instead, early reviews suggest it's one to skip.
The setup sounds promising. Affleck also stars as Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate with a military past and a court-record of controversy behind him, whose son is kidnapped. Alongside his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington), Mark is pushed toward paying the ransom — a hefty US$7 million in cold cash — even as family secrets and political ambitions complicate everything. Gillian Anderson plays a mysterious fixer brought in by campaign manager Sam Allison (Steven Yeun) when the ransom brokers prove unreliable, and the missing money only scratches the surface of what's really going on.
On paper, that's a pressure cooker: mounting demands, impossible choices, a public figure forced to weigh his family against his career. Critics say the film never turns up the heat. Despite the supposed urgency, most characters stay oddly calm, Affleck's Mark spends much of his time on the phone, and the tension rarely registers. A subplot involving a Mexican immigrant housekeeper (Luis Gerardo Méndez) tangled up in a low-speed chase feels limp, and scattered drone shots and floaty camerawork add distraction rather than atmosphere.
The deeper issue, according to the Bangkok Post's review, is that the movie seems determined to undercut its own thriller. Every twist follows the most predictable playbook, the person responsible is surprisingly underdeveloped, and clues about their motives are hinted at through a few scattered images rather than explored. The film also gestures at Los Angeles politics and social criticism, but mostly drifts away from its central story. Comparisons haven't helped: Akira Kurosawa's 1963 masterpiece High and Low covered similar ground — a kidnapping, wealth, and a crushing moral dilemma — with far more bite, and Affleck's version suffers badly next to it. The script reportedly began life as a stage play, and its confined, talky origins show.
None of this makes Animals a disaster worth hating — just a forgettable hour-and-45-minute watch that never earns its stakes. For travellers, the relevance is mostly of the flight-entertainment kind: if you're heading off on a long-haul and scrolling Netflix for something tense, this probably isn't the pick. The good news for film fans is that Affleck remains attached to several future projects, so there's every chance he bounces back. In the meantime, if you want a kidnapping thriller that actually delivers, High and Low is the smarter two hours — and it's a good excuse to finally catch up on a classic before or after a trip.
Review via Bangkok Post Life.
