Here, we come with the Animal Movie Review, This past weekend, Bollywood action-drama Animal topped the global box office and became the widest U.S. release for a Hindi-language film (on 888 screens, surpassing action Bonanza Jawan and Disney superhero outing Brahmāstra: Part One).
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Its writer-director-editor Sandeep Reddy Vanga has courted controversy for his portrayals of brash, misogynistic protagonists – like in his 2017 Telugu-language drama Arjun Reddy and its Hindi remake, Kabir Singh – and his flippant comments about domestic abuse.
Animal Movie is no exception to his unapologetic approach, but it ends up in an awkward position thanks to this real-world context. The first half of its 201 minutes presents a livewire character-thriller in the vein of The Godfather, led by an intense and committed lead performance and sprinkled with enough gory, gonzo action to put Korean ultraviolence to shame.
However, just when Animal ought to focus inward, it stagnates in the name of flipping a desperate middle finger at critics of Vanga’s previous work.
Animal Movie Review By Hottstories
The movie opens in black and white in 2056, with an aged Ranvijay “Vijay” Singh (a 40-year-old Ranbir Kapoor in some stellar old-man makeup) celebrating the centennial of his family conglomerate, Swastik Steel. As he reminisces about his late father, a group of party guests hang on his every word as he amuses them with crass penile humor.
Most of the story takes place in our present day, but before it kicks off, Vanga etches Vijay’s character in stone. The very next scene is a saccharine flashback to his childhood, during which he tries to cut class (and receives physical punishment from his teacher) just so he can attend his father’s birthday party.
However, once he gets home, his excited shouts of “Papa!” simply echo off the walls of an enormous mansion; Papa is too busy with the family business to spend time with his actual family.
Animal Movie Trailer
It’s hardly an unfamiliar premise, and bold men broken by their relationships with their fathers is a key theme in Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh. By introducing us to Vijay with scenes from his youth and old age, a tragic picture starts to emerge: This protagonist is a sycophant who worships his father and craves attention he’ll never receive.
As soon as the film gets rolling, it creates an immediate and electric tension through this desperate dynamic. Between these chronological bookends, a party for Vijay’s grandfather plants the seeds of animus between Vijay and his slick, assertive brother-in-law, Varun (Siddhant Karnick).
Before long, Vijay’s usually-absent father, Balbir Singh (Anil Kapoor, familiar to U.S. audiences from Slumdog Millionaire and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) steps in to publicly reprimand his doting son, further inflaming the daddy issues that define him.
This party scene is, for all intents and purposes, Vanga’s take on The Godfather’s iconic opening wedding sequence – the first of several Coppola homages. Both onscreen occasions introduce family and business dynamics while bringing a prodigal son one step closer to the fold.
Only where Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone was a respected war hero returning from battle, Ranbir’s Vijay is a spoiled and insolent brat on holiday from his expensive U.S. education, and he isn’t all that removed from his family’s imperial leanings. While Michael enters a world of violence, the destructive (and self-destructive) Vijay makes Animal a violent story.
Even before the violence turns physical (and boy, does it ever), there’s a vicious undercurrent at play thanks to the way Vijay treats the people around him, especially women.
Varun may be the immediate target of his ire, but Vijay’s snappy and controlling behavior towards his sisters Reet (Saloni Batra) and Roop (Anshul Chauhan) and his childhood sweetheart Geetanjali “Geetu” Iyengar (Rashmika Mandanna), depicts a man on the verge of exploding.
He’s a ticking time bomb of rank ugliness; even his romantic proposals are uncouth, with talk of the width of Geetu’s “child-bearing” pelvis.
Vanga is first and foremost a provocateur, so he’s hardly oblivious to the kind of story he’s telling. At one point, he visually quotes a particularly brutal scene from No Country for Old Men, and he even invokes Nazi imagery during one of Vijay’s speeches before a crowd of factory workers. (Vijay denies any parallels between the Hindu swastika in the company logo and the Nazi swastika, but the visual framing says otherwise.)
Vijay’s fascistic and deeply sexist statements go hand-in-hand with Ranbir’s pained but empty gaze, hiding not a broken young boy, but the husk of one – a man too far gone to come back from the brink. Granted, for those in the know about the real-world parameters around Vanga’s work, there remains a lingering sense that some audience members might relish in Vijay’s repulsiveness; women who have been critical of his work online have been harassed ad nauseam.
If Vanga is trying to have his misogynistic cake and eat it too, then Animal is technically a success in that regard – at least in its first half, during which the camera reveres Ranbir at every turn.
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Verdict
There’s some enjoyment to be had with Animal, but you’d be best off leaving the theater when the “Interval” card pops up on the screen if only to save yourself an extended, unpleasant headache that undoes all the raucous fun.
Ranbir Kapoor is deeply committed to his brash and ugly protagonist, but despite the movie’s explosive action, director Sandeep Reddy Vanga seems more preoccupied with provoking outrage than with telling a coherent story.
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