Animal

Animal, for all its blood and gore, is the story of a son's aching desire for his father's approval. The action, that drew whistles from a meagre crowd on an early winter morning show is the film's clear winner. Animal is Kapoor's film where the dialogue does not work, it's that hint of the unshed tear in his eyes and the tremor in his face that does.

Animal takes everything that was problematic about Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh and increases it several notches. It is downright the most violent Hindi film I have seen, and also one of the most inherently toxic and misogynist. The amazing part is that it is still very well made and entertaining, enhanced further by yet another great performance from Ranbir Kapoor.

Through an exhausting runtime of 3 hours, 21 minutes, comprising extreme bloodshed, testosterone and blatant misogyny, writer-director Sandeep Reddy Vanga glorifies the alpha male once again through his Godfather-esque tale. Animal ends up as all swag and no substance derailed family drama. He deserved a better script to match this level of performance.

'Animal' could have been a beautiful, meaty father-son love story. Instead, it is driven by its lead character's whims for 200 minutes. Everything is almost in place, except for the main requirement of a film -- its story.

Provocation and convolution. Two words that kept popping into my head while watching Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Animal. It almost felt like the director was aiming to provoke rather than engage with the audience.

Animal, though, is so wannabe-edgy that it becomes plain boring after a point. The writing is too distracted, too self-indulgent to allow that story to breathe. Instead, what we get are Sandeep's obvious attempts to hit back at people who slammed his earlier work.

'Animal' is another toxic film from Sandeep Reddy Vanga's 'alpha male franchise' that glorifies problematic behavior and fails to offer any meaningful commentary on its protagonist's destructive actions.

Animal sinks even further into regressive depths, resulting in one of the vilest protagonists to have graced the big screen. The swaggering, gratuitous violence aims to disturb, yet the execution of the action scenes is entirely forgettable and derivative, a poor man's version of The Godfather or Scarface. Despite its obvious desire to push buttons, Animal doesn't have the guts to actually own its transgressions.

Animal's problematic premise has already been discussed since its teaser and trailer were unveiled. What the full film offers is a series of events, emotions and sequences leading up to a rather underwhelming climax, which is so rushed that you keep waiting if something more is yet to come post the end credits.

Stuffed with carnage, peppered with overt emotional abuse, and seething with primal feelings, Animal doesn't set itself up to be liked. But in its unabashed exploration of an emotionally damaged alpha male, the movie is hard to dismiss. Kapoor's career-best performance makes Animal tough to stomach, but equally difficult to ignore.

Sandeep Reddy Vanga's protagonists — thick-headed creatures of privilege and entitlement — are all badly-behaved men who could easily pass for monsters. Yet no matter how bleak and paleolithic his view of human instincts, he also wants us to stand in awe of his heroes, even admire and empathise with them.

Animal feels like Vanga's effort to look at the criticism leveled at Kabir Singh and say, 'This is just the beginning'. Animal glorifies Ranvijay for his behaviour. Not once does anyone question the way he treats the women around him even though he is a man raised by the kindness of women – his mother and his two sisters.