Don’t allow ‘Animals’ to take you hostage

      Ben Affleck has no excuses for the sacrilege that is his Netflix kidnap thriller “Animals.” He serves as its director, co-writer, producer and star, and fails at all in a foolhardy stab at updating Akira Kirasawa’s masterful “High and Low.” The very same classic Spike Lee recently sought to modernize with the equally inferior “Highest 2 Lowest.”

    The plots of all three films are identical, with a wealthy dad facing professional and financial ruin just as his young son is snatched by an embittered, unknown enemy seeking a huge ransom. The twist is that the kidnapper has mistakenly grabbed the boy’s friend by mistake, sparking a moral dilemma for the monied protagonist: should he pay a ransom he cannot afford to save a boy that is not his.

    The only element unique to this incarnation is that Affleck’s Mark Kimball is a politician, not a high-ranking corporate executive on the eve of staging a hostile takeover of a flagging business. But the stakes are no less dire for Mark, who just emptied his coffers to launch an expensive ad campaign to salvage his dwindling chances of becoming the next mayor of Los Angeles.

    It’s early Halloween night, just days before the election, when Mark’s prepubescent son, Denny (Christopher Woodley), and the boy’s new friend, Hector (Jacob Estrada), head out to  trick-or-treat under the supervision of the Kimball’s housekeeper, Cecilia (Adriana Paz), who is the partner of Hector’s laborer father, Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez). Natch, the boys are the exact same height and build and wear identical costumes that conceal their faces.

     When Cecilia returns a short while later to the Kimball residence with neither boy in tow, the assumption is that the kidnapper snatched Denny and that Hector got lost in the confusion. When Denny eventually wanders through the front door, Mark and his unfaithful wife, Abigail (Kerry Washington), rejoice. But soon after, they realize Hector is the one being held captive by a disgruntled madman demanding $7 million in cash by midnight.  To keep things quiet, he warns he has the Kimble mansion under constant surveillance.

      Desperate and with nowhere to turn, Mark’s campaign manager, Sam Allison (Steven Yeun), steps in, claiming he knows a guy who knows a gal in Gillian Anderson’s shadowy Dayle Burton, who guarantees she can safely return the kid to his distraught dad for a non-refundable $1.4 million fee. Which is in addition to the full ransom. But will  Mark go along if it means giving up on his dream?

     Affleck imbues Mark with just the right amount of smarminess in his take-no-prisoners obsession with becoming mayor. But he and Washington are woefully unconvincing as a married couple on the verge of divorce. They have zero chemistry, and their characters’ various foibles feel inauthentic at best. Their relationship is almost as unconvincing as the Kimballs’ alleged closeness to Cecilia, whom they show scant respect for. One might suspect their mild indifference aligns with the story’s underlying critique of a growing imbalance between wealth and power. But such attempts come off as the Kimballs simply being elitist assholes.

     You’re put off by them and their emotive squabbles over who did what to whom throughout their rocky marriage. And what’s with Mark’s suppressed issues with his dad, a stinking rich tyrant who left him a fortune that Sonny Boy has managed to burn through? Their estrangement is hinted at but never fully explored. Ditto for the economic disparity between the Kimballs and Hector’s undocumented pops, an “illegal” forced to keep his head down and mouth shut even though he’s twice the man Mark will ever be.

      That’s the central problem with “Animals”: it introduces myriad undercooked, ultimately unresolved story strands. I suspect that might be a byproduct of having three “head chefs” in the writer’s kitchen, with Affleck and Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips”) taking turns doctoring up what Connor O. McIntyre lifted off Kirasawa’s original recipe.

     Affleck’s most glaring flaw rests in his failure to flesh out the kidnapper and his motives. The villain is so underdeveloped that when it comes time for the big reveal, you’re left scratching your head trying to remember who the heck he is. I actually had to comb through the opening scenes just to spot the perp.

    That’s a sign of botched editing and even worse direction, which is shocking given Affleck’s sterling track record behind the camera. This is easily his most deficient directorial effort. It’s flat, boring and lacking suspense. There’s neither affinity for the characters nor conviction in the movie’s subtle condemnation of how wealth and power have infected our political system, reducing it to a criminal enterprise.

    Affleck thinks he’s being clever by tacking on an ending dripping with smug cynicism. It only dilutes his film’s already clichéd message that we are all one. It suggests an “eat-the-poor” mentality so egregious I wouldn’t be surprised if “Animals” soon finds itself on the verge of extinction.

Movie review

Animals

Rated: R for language throughout, some violence and sexual references

Cast: Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, Adriana Paz, Christopher Woodley, Jacob Estrada and Luis Gerardo Méndez

Director: Ben Affleck

Writers: Connor O. McIntyre, Billy Ray andBen Affleck

Runtime: 105 minutes

Where: Premiering on Netflix on Oct. 9

Grade: D