It’s for the best that “Animals,” actor Ben Affleck’s sixth outing behind the camera, is streaming directly on Netflix — not that this slick, fast-paced serving of star pulp can’t or won’t command attention at the multiplex. But since Affleck’s rousing, enjoyable political drama “Argo” won the Best Picture Oscar it perhaps didn’t really need, his subsequent efforts have been weighed down by the heavy expectations of a prestige filmmaker — the dark, overcooked flop “Live by Night” certainly didn’t benefit, and while the crowd-pleaser “Air” rallied well, it wasn’t a major work either. Affleck is, at heart, an audience-minded sidekick: crazy and idiotic when he’s not hitting you sporadically with a harsh truth, “Animals” is throwaway pulp, but it benefits from the unpretentious professionalism of its director-star.
“He can’t enforce laws he doesn’t follow,” says Abigail (Kerry Washington), the perfectly put-together wife of Affleck’s character, Mark Kimball, a wealthy Los Angeles lawyer who is now turning to politics with a well-financed mayoral bid. The second she says it, just minutes into the proceedings, is when you know we’re about to pass through extreme moral darkness – heavily contrived by Affleck along with co-writers Billy Ray and Connor O. McIntyre. At its most incisive, the film hits the pressure points of good stinging political satire, and if it pressed them a little longer and harder, we could have had something quite powerful here. But “Animals” also has other, more sinister matters to deal with – a fiery marital melodrama, a hollow “what could You done” at the press of a button – and while those extreme high-low tones take away some gravitas from the film, they keep it very catchy.
“Animals” opens with one of Mark’s lengthy campaign ads – a knowingly sly compilation of buzzwords and blatantly false man-of-the-common images, hitting all the necessary demographic targets and working awfully hard to hide the fact that the former lawyer and his family occupy an enviable Beverly Hills estate worth more than $10 million. So far, people don’t really believe it: as Mark’s campaign manager, Sam (a disappointing role for Steven Yeun), informs him, he’s still lagging behind in the polls, with the city’s Latino vote particularly far out of his reach. How is this possible, when he and Abigail are so nice to their Mexican nanny Cecilia (“Emilia Pérez” Adriana Paz)?
Well, well within legal bounds: When Cecilia asks if they could possibly offer work to her boyfriend, illegal immigrant Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez), Abigail briskly explains that doing so could endanger her husband’s campaign. Still, it’s Halloween, and she and Mark trust Ramon enough to take their son Denny (Christopher Woodley) with his, while they take care of more important matters: more campaign prep for Mark and an online tryst with an extramarital lover for Abigail. So when Mark receives a call from a mysterious, malicious predator, claiming he’s kidnapped Denny and demanding a $7 million ransom, multiple strands of guilt come into play.
What begins as a fairly simple kidnapping thriller gradually transforms into something more complicated, if not downright complex, through a series of careful twists and turns. A few of them are easily predictable, but the most crucial is a diabolical spring, which cleverly shifts the stakes of the entire enterprise and tests Mark’s integrity both as a man and as a politician. Affleck, always at his best in roles that place his all-American alpha qualities under a harsh, sweat-inducing spotlight, cast himself perfectly here. Her performance, at first glance casual, is so convincingly edgy that you almost don’t need Dayle Burton’s (Gillian Anderson) slightly absurd character to tighten the screws.
An enigmatic British fixer called in by Sam for ransom – since Mark’s fortune has been largely swallowed up in his campaign – Dayle’s aim is mainly to strut around the premises with intimidating serenity in a crisp white pantsuit, and deliver dialogue like “Everyone’s owed something, it’s the big boy life” with a cut-glass accent that only makes him more ridiculous. His arrival is most entertaining, and also a clear signal of the film’s impending takeover by his own trashier instincts: Few things in “Animals” ring true from here on out, but you always want to know where he’s going, and how well he’s going to get there.
Yet for a few tantalizing minutes after its biggest bombshell, the film dangles the possibility of something strikingly and breathtakingly true: a glimpse of America at its cruelest and most unequal. It never amounts to that – despite a largely satirical and rather amusing coda that rightly pokes fun at a national tradition of macho personality politics. The rest of the filming, too, settles for a lower level of difficulty, from master DP Robert Elswit’s competent but anonymous mole lens to an untested ensemble of still-watchable actors playing capable of typing. “Animals” is a tangy, nasty diversion, where it could be something uglier and more persistent. But you can’t blame Affleck for just getting the job done with composure and efficiency.
Gn entert
