Animal World (2018)

Director: Yan Han

Starring: Yifeng Li, Dongyu Zhou, Michael Douglas

A man finds himself deep in debt and is coerced to board a ship that hosts a risky gambling party.

‘Animal World’ starts off looking like ‘Men in Black’ and develops into ‘Casino Royale’. This is undoubtedly for an acquired taste, and I haven’t quite acquired the taste for gambling movies. (’21’ being the exception).

The film is visually stunning with incredible photography. It starts off very promising, but then becomes a gambling movie, with almost 100 minutes of the movie spent on playing a game. Although I found it interesting at first, it became tedious as I simply did not understand the game, and had no interest understanding it either. It became repetitive with very little excitement. If it wasn’t for the incredible visuals and the great score, I probably would  have stopped watching.

‘Animal World’ is incredibly well made and well acted, but this is simply not my type of film and not one I’ll watch again.

In Mandarin.