Film Pick of the Week: Animals - review by Yvette Huddleston
Animals Netflix, review by Yvette Huddleston
Ben Affleck co-wrote, directs and stars in this gripping Los Angeles-set crime thriller. He plays ambitious LA politician Mark Kimbal who is running as an independent candidate for mayor of his hometown. Charismatic and charming, he knows the city well, having been born and raised there, understands it strengths and its challenges and is confident that he can make it a better place for everyone to live in.
The son of a successful self-made man, he has inherited money from his father and lives in a wealthy neighbourhood with his psychotherapist wife Abby, (Kerry Washington) and their pre-teen son Denny (Christopher Woodley). There appear to be tensions in the marriage and they become more apparent as the narrative progresses. Mark has ploughed more of his inheritance into the campaign than he has let on to Abby and has taken out a loan against the house.
Campaign manager Sam (Steven Yeun) knows the risks Mark is taking, but he feels it is worth it and is convinced that Mark has a real chance of winning the forthcoming election. Then disaster strikes. On Halloween Denny has gone out trick or treating with their Mexican housekeeper Cecilia (Adriana Paz) and Hector (Jacob Estrada), a boy of a similar age, who is the son of Cecila’s boyfriend Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez). Cecilia and the two boys, both wearing the same Halloween costume, head off while Mark, Abby and Sam stay at home. At some point in the evening Mark receives a phone call from a kidnapper saying that he has his son and demands the sum of seven million dollars if he ever wants to see him alive again.
Panic ensues and this is the moment that Abby discovers that they don’t actually have as much money as she thought they did. Sam advises the couple that there might be a way to secure the cash; he has a contact who can help. He hints that what she does is not entirely legal but Abby and Mark are desperate and agree that Sam should contact her. Enter mysterious fixer Dale Burton (Gillian Anderson) – calm, confident, efficient and expensive. A contract is entered into and then something extraordinary happens – Denny arrives home, he got separated from Cecilia and Hector. It gradually dawns on everyone that Hector has been kidnapped by mistake instead. Things begin to unravel as moral dilemmas as faced and secrets and lies rise to the surface.