Monkey Man: Dishing Out Action Thrills (Review)
Dev Patel’s action thriller 'Monkey Man' dishes out revenge with cold-blooded attitude, wit, and compassion for the underdog.
Vengeance is in the air this movie season. Heroes ready and eager to spill blood in pursuit of retribution are currently on the march from the dunes of Arrakis to the London streets of Femme, from Luc Besson’s shaggy Dogman to actor Dev Patel’s stunning directorial debut Monkey Man.
Patel — a supporting actor Oscar nominee for the 2016 biographical drama Lion — has worked with a number of accomplished filmmakers, and clearly has honed his own set of skills.
Yet, the film’s hyper-kinetic style definitely calls to mind the director perhaps most influential in the performer’s career, Slumdog Millionaire’s Danny Boyle. The Trainspotting auteur’s techno-driven, quick-cut rhythms feel laced into the DNA of Patel’s vigilante thriller.
One brisk sequence, following the insanely rapid progress of a stolen purse from the owner’s possession, out of a high-rise hotel and across town to the waiting hands of the thief who ordered it taken, aptly demonstrates the smooth, tactile sense of movement registered throughout the film.
Monkey Man also registers its hero’s heartfelt conviction about standing up for the downtrodden in an unjust society. Known simply as the Kid, and portrayed by Patel as a cunning survivor laden with pain, he’s been haunted for years by the childhood trauma of witnessing a massacre in his village in rural India.
Now dwelling in an unnamed metropolis, he’s on a mission to bring down those responsible for the slaughter, and the unfortunate fate of his dear mother Neela (Adithi Kalkunte). But his mission is bigger than just avenging what he witnessed as a child.
Maneuvering his way into a job inside Kings, a glamorous high-rise playland for the rich and rotten, the Kid soon witnesses a sex trafficking operation fronted by the same corrupt organization that destroyed his village. Kings, he learns, is one of many fronts controlled by vaunted holy man Baba Shukti (Makarand Deshpande).
Shukti’s “church” is busy displacing farmers to build factories that the guru refers to in the press as communes, populated not by workers but his “disciples.” Baba Shukti also has police chief Rana Khan (Sikandar Kher, a formidable villain) in his pocket, and is trying to get a puppet elected prime minister.
Against forces that have corrupted faith, the law, and the government in order to rob the nation, deceive its people, and destroy lives, what recourse to exact justice does the Kid have, the film argues, besides violent retaliation? So he seeks revenge.
The movie — written by Paul Angunawela and John Collee, based on a story by Patel — doesn’t deal with the Kid’s plotting, so much as it just shows his cool, precise execution of a plan. The intricacies require some hand-waving, suspending disbelief that a few extremely fortunate coincidences might break exactly the way the Kid hopes. But a dangling thread here or there doesn’t spoil the fun of all the blistering, bloody fighting that ensues.
The Kid hones his skills brawling in an underground bare-knuckle fight club as the monkey-masked competitor called Kong. Inside the ring, Kong is paid to lose. Outside the ring, the Kid kicks ass. Somebody asks him, “You like John Wick?” The answer is a resounding yes. And Bruce Lee, too, no doubt.
Patel, a taekwondo black belt who competed internationally before acting, is lightning fast on his feet in the bruising hand-to-hand battles choreographed by Brahim Chab, and brilliantly shot by Sharone Meir.
The camera clings to the action in thrilling fashion, in tight angles that emphasize the outrageous bodily harm inflicted on bad guys and the Kid. These fights get grisly. In this movie, when a guy comes out swinging an axe, you can bet the blade is going to find somebody’s skull. The violence is extreme, but so, too, the film suggests, is the people’s suffering at the hands of immoral leaders.
At the Kid’s lowest point in the course of his campaign, he’s taken in by some of the city’s most mistreated and marginalized. Inside a temple that’s become a home for outcasts and queer folx of all persuasions, particularly hijra — trans and intersex people recognized throughout India as a third gender — the Kid finds allies, and reinforces his purpose.
The film likewise proceeds with the purpose of a fresh filmmaker on a mission to call out oppression, uplift the survivors on the margins, and get his fight on like a lion in the ring.
Monkey Man (★★★★☆) is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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