Animal ( Hindi ) - Movie Review
I mean, I love Ranbir Kapoor and grudgingly agree that he's one of the finest actors of his generation but how much of his seething red-eyes and deranged father-hero worship can you take? Seems, not more than perhaps the first half that runs to perhaps a little over ninety minutes.
So well, the basics first : The story is about Vijay, a rich spoilt brat, son of one of the wealthiest industrialist in India, Balbir Singh (Anil Kapoor excels, in this role without resorting to much of his usual bon-vivant histrionics, just resigned fatigued eyes that watch a son go crazy in the name of unrequited love) . For Vijay, his father's attention and love is his entire world. Unfortunately for him, the busy father is more interested in ensuring his company's commercial interests, stock market values and upholding his family's legacy than being emotionally available to his son. In fact, he goes onto to compare his own son to his son-in-law, the elder daughter's husband, calling the son-in-law to be a truer heir to his value systems. This taunt of course, is just one of the straws that breaks the camel's back. The relationship is downright 'toxic', where Balbir is not afraid of some tough love, only if it would bring the wayward son back in line. But Vijay is the ultra-male, punch drunk on his own invincibility, his sense of righteousness driven to blind rage and wilful violence over anything that remotely fucks with his 'value' systems. Take for example, the scene early on, a flash back to his school days, where he takes a kalashnikov into a school, only because he wanted to get back at the college seniors who had dared to rag his sister. All this, while he was in school, mind you, an under-age driver without license who uses his daddy's Fortuner to run down scrawny kids in their silly RX-100's. It establishes Vijay's borderline obsession about "protecting" his family.
And funnily enough he blames his father, stating that he's the one who has taught him well. To protect one’s family at any cost. And so it is, that many years later, the prodigal son returns from a well-settled life in America, with his 'submissive' wife and kids in tow ( More on the wife in a minute!) when he learns of this shooting incident that almost cost Balbir his life. The Godfather-in-the-making Michael Corleone barges straight in, takes control of the family, the business and of course, the security detail to protect his family, especially his papa.
Till now, the movie actually is rock-solid. A dysfunctional family tale, highlighting some severe daddy-issues peppered with red-light signals about an over-the-top alpha male who oozes the bad-boy sex appeal, refuses to toe the line to anyone and is both unhinged and dangerous enough to take his childhood girlfriend up into the skies and marry her in a snow-laden mountain peak. Kabir Singh hangover anyone? There are scenes that seem to fit Vijay's character as having severe shades of Kabir Singh. Lazy writing? There is of course the non-stop smoking (the essential signs of a male), the barely contained aggression that threatens to break out into lacerating violence at a moment's notice, the women who barely get to speak much that are a Sandeep Reddy Vanga staple.
But with the threat to his industrial empire (equated to his papa), Vijay swings into action, going back to his pind to hire his own beefy cousins ( turban wearing muscled munde who love toting AK-47's as much as a glass of lassi or 'mix-ed' fruit juice ) as personal security detail. The boys of course jump for it, because why not? They get to drive black Range Rovers, shoot the fuck out of anything that remotely resembles a POP wall using automatic machine guns or pump-action sawed-off shotguns. The quintessential toys of masculinity. Guns, Fast Cars. There's a scene with some russian girls but this gets shot down fast enough, as Vijay is a man of principles who cannot cheat on his wife and so cannot abide his own brothers doing such things. A lost cause, really as the later scenes turn the tables.
Anyways back to the war. For a long while, it is like Secret Invasion (Marvel Series with Samuel Jackson?) because Vijay hasn't found out who it is that dared to shoot his papa. He flushes out the "mole" in the house in a staged-coup pretty early on. But this scene is only a precursor for his blood-lust. The scene before the interval where he fights a few hundred thousand assailants wearing strange "animal" masks ( Nod to Money Heist, perhaps?) almost single-handedly obliterating them is the real deal. He accomplishes this, for most parts, using a blunt fire-axe. Yeah I know, right? But with the musical background (the Punjabi munde lustily throating war-chants) it almost feels like a slick music video. Ranbir Kapoor is magnifico in the surreal well-choreographed fight scenes. A blood slicked demi god or a demon, you take your pick.
Post this, the second of the half devolves into absolute chaos. And there is nothing that can save this train-wreck of a movie that just digs deeper, swan-diving into the stygian depths of hell. Director Sandeep Reddy Vanga goes on showboating his controversial take on ultra-masculinity and misogyny. Vijay's character is a broken man, who craves for his father's acceptance. And yes while this is the central premise to the whole story of animal, there is no rational to this blind hero-worship. I just want my papa's attention. Fuck if I know why. There is no why. I will drown the world in blood, if anyone dares to even look him wrong. Especially my poor suffering wife who has been dragged around like a submissive, a dog on leash halfway across the world, without her knowing jackshit about the blood-thirsty maniac residing inside the egoistic good looking bad boy, a rich spoilt brat who auto-pilots his own plane long enough to have sex with his girlfriend in mid air, then land it in his own private airstrip in the middle of a snow-laden nowhere to marry her. The man (engineer of course!) designs his own "made-in-India" anti-aircraft bazooka monster of a rail-gun using his german contacts and Indian jugaadu weapons-master Freddy.
Late second half introduces us to Bobby Deol's character Abrar, who comes in too late to save anything. But he brings in a menacing ferality to the nature of things that ups the blood-lust quotient of the movie, dialling it all the way to eleven and beyond. As if we needed any more.
As far as technicalities go, the movie is shot stupendously. The background score and music is brilliant. The acting, especially. Ranbir Kapoor in the titular role ( though by the end of the movie, there are so many contenders for that title of animal that it makes your head spin) is fabulous. He easily slips into the role of the deranged Rannvijay Balbir Singh, with "papa in his eyes, heart and head" instead of stars or even love. He is raw, he is riveting as the man-boy who refuses to grow up. The boy whose hurt and rejection by his emotionally unavailable father turns him into an animal. Ranbir as the chain-smoking, vengeful son out to burn the world, is cocksure and chews up the scenery, every time he swaggers onto the screen. Which is actually pretty much the entire three and half hours of it. Anil Kapoor, is by comparison, a mild subdued actor but he shows why he is the class that he is. An arrogant rich businessman, brought low by his inability to reign in his own man-child, 'bastard son', Balbir Singh character is a well written, well rounded character. The others are just scenery in this Sandeep Reddy Vanga movie. Yes, there is the big villain Bobby Deol, a blink and almost miss act. For some weird reason, Sandeep Reddy decides to have him play a "dumb" guy who has given up on speech but does express aplenty with his eyes and his knives. All those years in the gym pays off yes but that last scene on the airstrip with two bearded long haired shirtless brutes slugging it out is just plain exhausting. I was searching for a fast-forward button.
Oh well, I forgot the women. The women? Sandeep Reddy's women are objects of sex, misogynistic violence, meek beings who are happy being subjected to their men's whims and whips. Except the fiery spitfire Rashmika Mandanna's Gitanjali. Ha, you hope! Rashmika's transition to the big badass bollywood hasn't really been that smooth. With this big ticket, she tries valiantly but unfortunately her hindi dialogue delivery is horrendous. And her capitulation to Ranbir's big bad wolf in almost every frame, despite starting out as a loud, strong woman who wants to teach her husband a lesson in humility, is a cringe-fest. She forgives him an extra-marital affair because he claims he did it to ferret out a mole, a threat against dear papa. Fuck's sake. There's Tripti Dimri who comes in pretty late in the movie, but frankly does nothing to uplift our image of women in the hyper-masculine-he-man-worshipping vanga-verse.
In summary, despite the new levels of dizzyingly crazy action sequences, the extreme blatant misogyny, the deranged bestial otherworldly portrayal by Ranbir Kapoor, this ‘Animal’ Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s third directorial, the super-hero sized addition to the legacy of Kabir Singh or Arjun Reddy, just falls flat. The sum of parts, unfortunately don’t fit in well to become a whole. The distorted writing feels like a fan-service to stage stylistic vignettes based on multiple influences like Godfather, Leatherface or even Troy. The grisly splatterfest on promise, fails to draw us in. It is exhausting frankly. Sandeep Reddy Vanga promises us a franchise, with a teaser welcoming us to the “Animal Park”, with double the action (wink!) – but I would sooner torch that park than venture anywhere close.
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