In interviews, Ben Affleck comes across as savvier about politics than a typical Hollywood guy, and he’s been floated from time to time as a political candidate. He’s also played politicians a handful of times, including in the mostly forgettable thriller State of Play.
Affleck plays a political candidate again in the new Netflix movie Animals, which he directed and co-wrote (along with writers including Billy Ray, who also co-wrote State of Play). He’s playing Mark Kimball, a lawyer who’s running as an outsider candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, when his son’s kidnapped and held for ransom. Kerry Washington returns to her Scandal comfort zone of tawdry political intrigue as his wife.
People often accuse Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro of ripping off Barack Obama’s cadences in political speeches, and Affleck tries to sound exactly like that, as we see in an opening montage where he gives what sounds like a sincere political speech. Animals soon segues into a derivative kidnapping thriller that doesn’t show much new, although it does get creative—if too cute—with its ending. This is one of those movies where you can narrow down the suspects because there just aren’t that many characters to begin with.
Netflix has warned critics not to spoil certain plot points, but Animals has a remarkably similar premise to a certain old movie, one that was remade fairly recently. Ben Affleck has directed some very good movies, including one, Argo, that won the Best Picture Oscar. This one is less likely to stick in people's minds, though Affleck starred in a much better Netflix film, The Rip, earlier this year. Also, I’m not sure why the film is called Animals, or why it went with such a generic title.
Affleck and his wife, days away from the election, have to deal with the kidnapping of their son by mysterious abductors. It’s already a stressful situation, complicated further by political third rails, the couple’s troubled marriage, and the revelation that the implicitly wealthy Affleck has essentially sunk their entire savings into his campaign and can’t easily afford a ransom payment.
Steven Yeun plays against type as Affleck’s Machiavellian campaign adviser, and the film introduces Gillian Anderson as a shadowy, English-accented fixer who helps the family. A lot of people weren’t into Anderson’s accent work in the recent Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and while I thought she was a delight as the Southern-accented fading scream queen in that film, that’s less the case here. At any rate, Animals tries to tie modern political concerns to the standard kidnapping plot, and that combination doesn't work.
If the movie had focused more on Affleck as a modern politician trying to live up to the guy we meet in the opening scene, it probably would’ve been more interesting. Also potentially more interesting? Affleck reportedly nearly cast Jennifer Garner—his ex-wife—in the wife role, although at that point his old pal Matt Damon was supposed to star as well. A movie about a stressed marriage where the lead couple is already divorced in real life? I’d be into that.