An anonymous young man unleashes a campaign of vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to systemically victimize the poor and powerless. I most certainly did not have Dev Patel kicking ass and becoming the Indian version of John Wick on my 2024 bingo card. For a directorial debut, Dev Patel swings for the fences with this action crime thriller steeped in Indian culture and mythology, and to my surprise, he hits a solid double, maybe even a triple. Patel plays Kid, a.k.a. Monkey Man with a quiet yet ferocious intensity, showing much of his emotions through his body language and facial expressions. He might not be a man of many words, but the film does a pretty good job at showing you who he is through his actions. His character and tragic backstory are very reminiscent of typical revenge driven action protagonists, but what makes Kid’s different is the approach the movie took in terms of using elements from Indian mythos and culture to add its own flavor and layers of depth. In this film alone, Patel completely proves himself as a formidable action star, completely capable of handling his own in both the dramatic and physical aspects.
Patel’s direction is wildly ambitious and super in your face, with heavy use of close-ups, hand held shots, and a utilization of shaky camera to sometimes visceral and sometimes nauseating effect. The camera moves plenty and I would say that I was able to make out a good majority of what was going on in the fight scenes. Speaking of which, the fights in this movie are viciously violent and gory, with some bloody moments and kills that will make you jolt in your seat. The story itself is one we’ve seen many times before and mixes Indian history, mythology, and politics. Sikandar Kher is brutally ruthless and physically powerful as the main villain Rana, who is the right hand man of corrupt religious leader Baba Shakti played with subdued menace by Makrand Deshpande. The movie goes into the political corruption and class struggle in modern day India to mostly coherent effect, although some of it can be a bit muddled. Sharlto Copley is in this movie with his usual pent up energy and I only wish his role was more than a mere extended cameo. There are some excellent uses of music here, particularly with one of the drummers who plays to the beat of Kid hitting a punching bag.
The pacing is a bit wonky and moves in a very stop and go sort of manner. What I mean by this is that there is a long extended action set piece, then a big pause for backstory/character development, and the movie goes through this cycle a few times after the 30 minute mark. Perhaps 10 or so minutes could have been trimmed to smoothen out the pacing a bit. Kid periodically goes into the fighting ring donning his ridiculous monkey mask and takes supremely brutal beatings and somehow manages to get back up and fight back. He takes heavy punches constantly from extremely strong fighters whether inside or outside the ring and you’ll have to suspend your disbelief. The final fight sequences are balls to the wall insane and brought the raging spirit of the poor lower class to the surface. There are lots of trippy visuals involving the Indian mythos and the red neon basked cinematography was stunning to look at. I found the ending to be rather surprising and unexpected but in the most fitting and satisfying way possible.
This is one of those movies that came out of nowhere and shocked me. Not all of Patel’s decisions work, and he is definitely not fully ready to stage fully coherent foot or car chases just yet, but I can’t deny that a majority of his in-camera techniques really fit the frantic, raw, and animalistic personality of this film. After all, it is called Monkey Man. Producer Jordan Peele truly let Dev Patel loose creatively with Monkey Man, as Patel wrote the script, starred, and played the lead role. A bold and risky move to be sure, but one that I personally felt paid off more than I expected. Overall, though not without a few amateurish technical aspects, Dev Patel’s directorial debut is an frenetically exhilarating, viscerally gnarly, brutally violent, and always in your face action crime thriller steeped heavily in intriguing Indian lore and mythology. Monkey Man alone proves that Dev Patel is not just an incredible actor, but also a highly convincing action star.
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