Dev Patel in Monkey Man. Courtesy of Monkeypaw Pictures.
Dev Patel plays triple duty as action hero star and writer-director of his ultraviolent revenge fable Monkey Man. With action sensibilities akin to John Wick and a politically charged narrative deeply embedded in Indian culture and society, the movie is a roaring crowd-pleaser that is as thrilling as it is emotionally resonant. Though its ambitious plot can feel overstuffed at times, Patel's magnetic screen presence and assured vision keep you hooked from beginning to end.
Monkey Man is in theaters on Friday, April 5.
When the eponymous “Monkey Man” — simply billed as “Kid” and played by Dev Patel — goes to a black market weapons dealer to buy a small concealable weapon the man jokes he's like John Wick. It's an apt comparison in many ways. Both The Kid and Wick spend their movies seeking revenge on people who wronged them in stunning, brutal, and neon-lit fashion. However, that's where the comparisons end. Where John Wick opted for simplicity in its story and complexity in its world, Monkey Man takes place in our world using themes that feel familiar to us while telling a story that we may not be privy to but can relate to.
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The first time we meet The Kid he's donning a monkey mask much like the Hindu legend Hanuman, a monkey whose strength and courage helps him rescue the wife of the deity Rama. He learned the story as a child (Jatin Malik) from his mother (Adithi Kalkunte). However, The Kid is no Hanuman. Instead of a battlefield, he's waging his war in an underground fight club run by a greedy MC (Sharlto Copley) where his skinny frame is no match for the hulking figures he's meant to fight who more often than not defeat him in the ring. It doesn't matter to The Kid though, he's just doing this and various odd jobs to gather money.
For nearly the first hour, exactly what The Kid's mission is or why he's on it is unclear. All we know is that the next step is to get a job at a VIP club run by Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar), a sharp-tongued businesswoman in stilettos. He finds his way in by orchestrating the stealing of her purse in a kinetic sequence that puts Patel's directorial skills at the forefront. The purse goes from hand to hand across the fictional Indian city Yatana until it reaches Patel where he uses “finding” it to leverage a job at the club. The sequence drives home that the city is split between the upper echelon and the streets — a theme that continues throughout the film.
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The club's clientele is exactly who The Kid is targeting, particularly police chief Rana (Sikandar Kher) who we learn through a series of flashbacks murdered his mother and destroyed the community he called home in favor of further development of the sprawling city. We breezily move between the past and the present with little to slow the narrative down even with diversions to The Kid's unwitting accomplice Alphonso (Pitobash) and an escort called Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala) who works in the club. When he finally hatches his plan, the movie erupts into a flurry of violence that is captured with the kind of singular Bollywood maximalism that Patel said he was inspired by.
Much of the DNA of Monkey Man feels rooted in Patel's desire to explore his homeland (he was raised in the U.K. by Kenyan-born Indian parents). That extends to the background of The Kid's mission and the political corruption that is plaguing the country, represented by faux-spiritual figure Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) who uses his benevolent demeanor to hide his oppression of the poor — including the order to remove The Kid's community that ended with his mother's death. There's almost too much on Patel's mind to get to everything he wants. Another storyline that involves a group of hirja, a tribe of third-gender people, led by Alpha (Vipin Sharma) displaced by Shakti's policies feels shirked based on its importance in the movie's final act.
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However, Patel's heart is certainly in the right place. As transgender people worldwide fight for their place, it's encouraging to see this storyline featured. That can be said for much of what Patel is doing with Monkey Man. While it has the mistakes we often see with first-time directors, and especially actors-turned-directors, the sheer ambition is admirable. It's best on display in the movie's stunning final act where we get to see the fruits of The Kid's journey and Patel's.
The result is the rip-roaring, white-knuckling action filmmaking that is impossible not to be taken by. With kinetic fight choreography and kinetic cinematography from Sharon Meir, it's a great omen for Dev Patel's future as a filmmaker.
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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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