Monkey Man preview screening provided by Universal Pictures
It doesn’t take long for Monkey Man, Dev Patel’s directorial debut 10 years in the making, to thrust you into a world teeming with injustice, blood and grime. In fact, it’s there from the outset following a short monologue describing the backstory to an Indian legend, Hanuman, that drives much of the film’s undertones.
Monkey Man is a brutal revenge thriller charting a man’s rise from blood soaked human cockfighting in the slums, to the bustling streets of the vibrant, fictional Yatana city beyond. It’s not unlike similar action revenge flicks of recent times like the John Wick series (which it even name drops) or Nobody (2021), yet it retains a level of verisimilitude through its distinguishable identity that Patel has clearly spent time trying to workshop on top of the frenetic fight sequences.
Kid (Patel) has experienced loss at the hands of people in power (namely the police and its chief), and like John Wick, he’s all-in on enacting vengeance to those who did him wrong. As you’d expect, much of this film plays out in a rather formulaic fashion where we see our hero rise from the ashes and fall again before re-building himself up for once last hurrah.
Where Patel has tried to impose himself on the genre is by weaving in the aforementioned legend of Hanuman to imbue the character with a purpose that extends beyond simply trying to kill and be done with it. Ultimately this never really lands in the way Patel might hope it would, with large chunks of the second act often falling flat when away from the action while Kid is nursed back to health following a failed assassination of Rana (Sikandar Kher as the film’s prime adversary) and attempt to flee. This dip takes away from the momentum that has been building up in the moments prior and feels like Patel is trying to get all of his eggs in a basket in ways that similar directorial debuts tend to go —and that’s not surprising since the film was in limbo for a while until producer Jordan Peele practically ‘saved’ it.
Yet when Monkey Man is hitting, it’s really hitting, and that’s through the well crafted hand-to-hand and gun combat that is reminiscent of classic Bruce Lee titles like Enter the Dragon (1973) or fellow suit-wearer John Wick’s tussles, respectively. There’s a greater freedom in these sequences with Patel experimenting a bit more and having fun with the affordances of breakable chairs, glass and the wider space of these fancy venues (there’s even a few knife and axe moments that had me squirming).
By the time the third act has rolled around Kid is a fully fledged badass who has embraced his proverbial destiny. It opens the film up from the shell it became in the second act and is really where it’s at its best. Some of the political tendencies that Patel tries to inject feel forced in this third act and really reiterate that the film just has too much it wants to say but not the leg room or the chops to do so. The punches in the film land great, the subtext, not so much. Then again, this is a director finding his voice, and if Monkey Man is anything to go by, this won’t be the last we see of Patel behind the camera, and that’s the best hit of the bunch.
Monkey Man opens nationally from the 4th of April.
Rating Frames 