Animal: How Ranbir Kapoor's film shows a world of Sikhs and Muslims but never becomes about religion | Explained

In Animal, Anil Kapoor is the patriarch of a family that can’t be exactly described in words. Is the family flawed, dysfunctional, or just has a son who can be violently unpredictable or unpredictably violent? We don’t get enough scenes between the family but what we do know is they are Punjabis as the man of the house is named Balbir Singh. We don’t get to know the name of Ranbir Kapoor’s character right till the interval. He introduces himself as Ranvijay Singh Balbir.

The 18-minute combat between the hero’s army and villain’s henchmen before the interval defines the tone of the film, but somehow, it also makes an attempt to make the film what we call as Pan-India. Kapoor’s army is of Sikhs, the man who delivers that monstrous machine gun is a Marathi, the hero is Delhi’s Punjabi boy, and the machine itself is Made In India. These are subtle touches in an otherwise overdone and overblown star vehicle. Director Sandeep Reddy Vanga never addresses the fact he has infused multiple religious identities into one narrative.

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And then there are the Muslims. Bobby Deol is Abrar, who plays Kapoor’s half-brother, a monster who rapes his wife on his third wedding. Barring his name, Vanga steers clear from resorting into clichés of his being. In fact, his two wives are having a chat about why they married this reckless maniac, one says for money and the other quips because he's mute and she likes silence. It's an amusing moment that saw a couple of giggles among the audience.

We also have Tripti Dimri, a girl named Zoya who’s nothing but a mole to eliminate Anil Kapoor’s character. Her cover is expectedly blown, but again, she’s not labeled a traitor merely because she belongs to a certain religious community. That's where the film manages to make an impression.