Animal, written, directed, and edited by Sandeep Reddy Vanga, sells a “surgeit of everything”—length, violence, love, obsession, and toxicity—as well as strident drama meant to elicit trauma. Rarely does the horrifyingly violent father-son action drama take a breath.
Occasionally, the elderly man’s spouse attempts to speak up but is utterly unsuccessful. Her spouse silences her. Though the son’s wife has a lot more to say, it is all meaningless nonsense that she forces on her husband and the audience.
Intermingled with an abundance of flimsy fashion, the unrestrained extravagance of the Ranbir Kapoor film refuses to end. With a gun in hand, the pathologically entitled schoolboy storms into the hero’s older sister’s college classroom and opens fire. His dad yells at him, calling him a criminal in the process. However, reprimanding the boy is not enough. If a man defends his sister when she is in difficulties, that is acceptable in his opinion. For a protagonist who is obviously in need of mental health treatment, the remainder of the repugnant movie provides a long list of justifications. Anil Kapoor lends his usual elan to Ranbir Kapoor’s strong performance. However, the two stars’ efforts are wasted because the movie is primarily driven by questionable methods and impulses. When the two are selling their wares, you want to turn away. It is a nearly three-and-a-half-hour long story of a boy’s crazy passion for his extremely wealthy industrialist father, who does not have the time to return the gushing filial ardour. However, that is merely one of the many reasons Animal is a taxing movie. It is a full-on assault on the senses in every manner.
Animal is the kind of movie that makes us think that it’s okay for a devoted son to lose his mind over confronting people who endanger the safety of his father and his two sisters. He is free to act as brash as he pleases because the family seems to be in danger all the time. When the main character, Ranbir Kapoor, discovers that there is in fact a plot to assassinate the patriarch and take his family’s steel plant, he loses it all, splatters copious amounts of blood, murders tens of people, and gets hotter and hotter. This guy is my-way-or-the-highway; there’s no room for niceties, not even in love. He reaches for love rather than falling in love. He makes no marriage proposal. He asks for it outright.He seems only interested in the girl, Geetanjali (Rashmika Mandanna), whom he had a thing for in school but hasn’t seen since his irate father, Balbir Singh, sent him to the US with the intention of seeing him turn his life around.
But nothing alters. When Ranvijay Singh returns, he is more dangerous than ever. The woman does not even so much as whimper. In addition to showing no self-control, she appears excited at the idea of being whisked away from her engagement party and forced into a marriage against her parents’ desires. His personal worth is minimal. She is not voiceless; rather, her words and opinions are only responses to the things that the man in her life performs of his own free will, then pretends that they are mutually agreed upon. He presents the kind of implausible reasoning that only a man like him can when he goes from his wife and becomes close to another girl (Triptii Dimri).
If the protagonist is like manner, how could the antagonist—Bobby Deol, who finds it difficult to leave an impression in a drastically reduced role—be any different? He’s not. Animal has already completed more than half of its journey when the antagonist, who lives in remote Scotland and essentially does whatever his wounded heart pleases, appears. The savage villain doesn’t stop at nothing to demonstrate that he is just as bloodthirsty as Swastik Steel’s owner, Ranvijay Singh, the heir of the business group. A lethal blood feud has ensnared the two men. An vicious assault on Balbir Singh (Anil Kapoor) by men seeking to seize control of the ageing tycoon’s business empire leads to a retaliation so vicious that it starts a never-ending chain of violence. Animal uses the examples of two men who are both emotionally and physically damaged to prove that it is a man’s world. Six bullet wounds that drive one’s heart to its breaking point cause one to lose all senses of taste, smell, and hearing. One is unable to speak. His brother acts as an interpreter for sign language, helping him to communicate. The final confrontation between the two men is filmed on an airstrip’s tarmac, similar to how these fight scenes are typically set in revenge stories. Delete the idea that the physical flaws that the warring couple must contend with serve as a metaphor for the deficiencies that males of their kind have. The hero always has a repugnant explanation for everything he does to make sure he gets his way. Animal appears to be asking the audience, What could be a bigger motivation than a man’s wish to get his father’s attention when all his work is done?
The background music is the one thing that, if anything, can be learned from this unsettling and boring movie. Folk songs—Marathi, Punjabi, you name it—combine to create a soundtrack that perfectly complements the gratuitously graphic action scenes. There is a piece played on a string instrument for one action scene and a whistled song for another. Unfortunately, as you leave the movie wondering what all the deafening noise was about, music is probably the last thing Animal is going to leave you with.
