Published Oct 20, 2026, 7:30 PM EDT
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Ben Affleck has made a career out of playing men whose lives are coming apart, but he’s having one of his biggest headaches to date with his newest thriller. The Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker has already shown his talent with movies like Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo, but his latest project takes things in a particularly nasty direction. Throw a kidnapping into the middle of a political campaign, a marriage that’s the very definition of rocky, and suddenly winning an election becomes the least of anybody’s problems.
That movie is Animals, Affleck’s new Netflix thriller, which has become an enormous streaming success, attracting 54.6 million views worldwide in its first two weeks. After debuting at No. 1 on the streamer’s global English-language movie chart with 23.8 million views, the film added another 30.8 million views during the week of October 12–18, proving that audiences are continuing to discover the crime thriller rather than simply turning up for its opening weekend.
The movie introduces Affleck’s protagonist, Mark Kimball, as a successful politician, loving father, and doting husband to Abigail. But that glittering facade is cracked when Mark and Abigail’s son Denny is kidnapped. The cast is led by Affleck (Gone Girl) as Mark Kimball, alongside Kerry Washington (Scandal) as Abigail Kimball, Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Steven Yeun (Beef), Luis Gerardo Méndez (Murder Mystery) and Ray Fisher (Zack Snyder’s Justice League).
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Affleck’s take on the movie is that, while it seems like a typical kidnapping thriller on the surface, this one is actually about the difficult choices people make when everything they care about is threatened. Speaking to Netflix’, Affleck explained:
“In a crisis, we discover who we are, and what’s important to us […] I see now more than ever how true those words are […] Who are we really? Who are we when our masks come off? […] Ultimately, this is a story about whether people have a real moral compass or seek to do what’s in their best interests […] The movie is really about marriage — what it means to attach yourself to someone, the bargains and exchanges.”
With more than 54 million views in just 14 days, Animals has established itself as another major Netflix success for Affleck, proving that audiences are still very much interested in watching the actor navigate increasingly disastrous situations.
Animals** is streaming now exclusively on Netflix.**
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