Film Review: "Animal: Great acting by Ranbir Kapoor and Anil Kapoor...but an anti-women film..."

Rating: One and a half stars

Producer: T-Series, Bhushan Kumar, Kishan Kumar, Pranay Reddy Vanga, Murad Khetani

Author: Sandeep Reddy Vanga, Pranay Reddy Vanga, Saurabh Gupta

Director: Sandeep Reddy Vanga

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna, Tripti Dimri, Bablu Prithviraj, Shakti Kapoor, Prem Chopra, Suresh Oberoi, Ravi Gupta, Siddhant Karnik, Saurabh Sachdeva, Upendra Limaye, Gagan Deep Singh, Indira Krishnan and others.

Duration: 3 hours 23 minutes

There would be nothing wrong if the famous South Indian director Sandeep Reddy Vanga was called 'One Film Wonder'. Sandeep Reddy first made the film 'Arjun Reddy' in Telugu. Which he later made in Hindi with Shahid Kapoor as 'Kabir Singh'. Now he has brought his third film 'Animal', which apart from Hindi, has also been released in Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam languages. Although the film 'Animal' is the story of a complex relationship between a father and son, however, the thinking of director Sandeep Reddy Vanga is that every human being has violent tendencies and is hungry for sex, and is aggressive. It is believed that there is an animal inside every human being. But the animal sometimes appears inside the human being. The animal inside the human being does not dominate him 24 hours a day. After the release of the film 'Kabir Singh', there was a lot of criticism from women's organizations and women across the country. But even in 'Animal', the hangover of 'Kabir Singh' is visible on Sandeep Reddy Vanga. The way many things have been glorified is also wrong.

Story:

At the center of the story is Ranvijay Singh (Ranbir Kapoor), who does not get the expected love from his father since childhood. His billionaire father Balbir Singh (Anil Kapoor) is the owner of Swastik Company whose business is spread all over the world. Therefore Balbir does not have time to pay attention to the house. His grandfather (Suresh Oberoi) lives at home. Ranvijay Singh's mother is Jyoti Singh (Charu Shankar), Ranvijay has two sisters - Reet and Roop (Anshul Chauhan). Ranvijay Singh turns to crime after not getting love from his father. No matter what, he respects his parents who are busy with their work. Ranvijay Singh can do anything for his father. After studying in a boarding school, he realizes that his elder sister Reet (Saloni Batra)'s husband Varun (Siddhant Karnik) is wrongfully taking over his father and Swastik Company. Ranvijay Singh asserts his rights over his friend's sister Geetanjali (Rashmika Mandanna) and marries her, which does not get the support of Balbir Singh. Ranvijay Singh goes to America on his private plane with his wife Geetanjali. He also becomes the father of a son and a daughter. One day he comes to know that his father has been fatally attacked. So he comes back with his family. But Varun does not allow Ranvijay to meet Balbir. But Mishra's uncle (Shakti Kapoor) takes him to Balbir. Ranvijay wonders how this accident happened despite hundreds of gun-wielding security personnel from home to factory. He starts investigating. Ranvijay comes to know that this whole incident has been done by Varun and his brother. Then Ranvijay goes to Punjab and meets his cousin's grandfather, joins all the cousins with him to create an internal army of reliable bodyguards, and one-day murders Varun and his brother. After that, three hundred masked men reach the hotel where he and his brothers are staying, to kill them, but somehow Ranvijay remains alive. But one has to spend several months in the hospital. Then internal family politics and rivalries related to business and other relationships come to the fore. But Ranvijay knows how to protect the family.

Review:

The story of the film 'Animal' creates more confusion than necessary. The story spreads from Delhi, Kedarnath, America, and Scotland to Istanbul. However, the viewer is not able to understand when and where the story reaches. The writer and director have deliberately tried to create confusion instead of presenting the story straight. For example, in the film Ranvijay along with his bodyguards kills Varun, the audience is shocked as to what happened, and then later the story gets revealed. Similarly, Limaye's visions also confuse people. The kind of hero that filmmaker Sandeep Reddy Vanga has glorified on screen, it seems that he wants to create a new kind of society. The kind of dialogue that takes place on the internal relations and sexual relations between husband and wife can attract the young generation, but it is sure to cause harm to the young generation. Having immense love for your father does not mean that you become a criminal.

The only thing the filmmakers point out in the violence-laden plot, which runs for nearly three and a half hours, is that if Vijay (Ranbir Kapoor) had noticed his always-busy father Balbir (Anil Kapoor), he would not have resorted to brutality. To explain this, the filmmaker needed to serve so much bloodshed and sex. The entire focus of the filmmaker is on underlining the toxic relationship between father and son and justifying the son's becoming a criminal, which cannot be accepted in a civilized society. Granted, Ranvijay did not get love from his father who was busy in business but does the steady love and affection of his mother (Charu Shankar) and sisters mean nothing to him? Perhaps this is what is called patriarchal thinking. Not only this, is it appropriate for Vijay to make a lewd comment about a girl (Rashmika Mandanna) whom he met again after many years?

In fact, after the interval, Sandeep Reddy Vanga deviates from the main point of his story. On one hand, the filmmaker wants to present his hero Ranvijay as Ram, who promises his wife that he will never cheat on her. So what can we call the way he has sex with Zoya (Tripti Dimri) for several days? Is it necessary to pretend to love and have sex with a spy just to expose her and then justify it to our wife? Can we do that? The filmmaker has done an injustice to Bobby Deol by not establishing his character Abrar Haq properly. There is a lot of violence, bloodshed, and sex. We believe that Bollywood filmmakers are not serving such great action scenes in their films. Due to violence and bloodshed, many emotional scenes could not emerge as they should have. There are many scenes of conversation between Anil Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor, where the emotion could have been heightened, but the writer and director failed.

Acting:

Ranbir Kapoor's acting in the role of Ranvijay Singh is brilliant. Ranbir Kapoor has given amazing performances in action scenes and has given sleepless nights to all the actors including Ranveer Singh, Shahid Kapoor, Shahrukh Khan, and Salman Khan. Rashmika Mandanna's dialogue delivery is messed up. Apart from this he still needs to work on his acting. Anil Kapoor's performance in the role of Balbir Singh is amazing. Now people will remember Tripti Dimri only for her bold and sexy scenes. The talent of Prem Chopra, Shakti Kapoor, Suresh Oberoi, and Indira Krishnan has been wasted. Bobby Deol's performance in the role of Abrar Haq should be praised, but in our opinion, Bobby Deol should avoid playing such small and poorly written characters. If we ignore the action in this film, then Bobby Deol has already done everything else in the web series “Ashram”.

- Shantiswarup Tripathi