When word got out that Dev Patel was going to make his directorial debut, people probably wasn’t that surprised that he would use this opportunity to examine his culture and bring it to the screen. What we didn’t expect, was for the guy to craft a violent, bruising, action thriller that owed just as much to blood soaked brawlers as The Raid 2 and John Wick as it did to things like Slumdog Millionaire.
As a result we get Monkey Man, a typically animalistic revenge tail that sees its tormented protagonist attempt to rail against the gargantuan disparity in wealth that plagues the Indian city of Yatana (a fictional stand-in for Mumbai) by inflicting – and withstanding – astonishing amounts of punishment upon the ones responsible for his mother’s death many years prior.
With a boatload of righteous beatdowns to administer and Jordan Peele in his corner as a producer, can Pattel’s directorial debut find that sweet spot between enlighted spirituality and skin splitting brutality?
“Kid” is an anonymous young man consumed over the death of his mother when he was a small boy at the hands of corrupt leaders such as whip-mean police chief Rana Singh and his fake shaman boss, Baba Shakti, who had their settlement raised to the ground in order to make way for a brand new factory. Swearing vengeance, Kid negotiates the squalid, crime littered streets of Yatana and earns funding for his vendetta by throwing fights at an illegal fighting ring where he assumes a masked character inspired by the monkey God Hanuman.
Finally earning enough to buy a gun and infiltrate the kitchen staff of ruthless Madame, Queenie, he bides his time, working up the ranks until he can get promoted to the more restricted floors of her club and thus get closer and closer to Singh, who frequently visits the place to blow off steam.
Despite bonding with Sita, one of the prostitutes, and Alphonso, a charismatic gopher, soon the time of Kid’s vengence is at hand and he steels himself to murder an unaware Singh when he goes to the bathroom – but when the assassination goes about as sour as lemon juice mouthwash, Kid finds himself putting those latent fighting skills to good use in a frenzied chase across the city.
However, despite his preternatural talent of withstanding multiple and sustained beatings while somehow still remaining as photogenic as Dev Patel, Kid gets badly wounded, but wakes up in the care of Alpha, a transgender who has taken refuge with many others of her kind in a temple to escape the violence of right wing leaders. After healing and getting his mojo back, can Kid draw from the legends of Hanuman to finally achieve his murderous goal?
In this time, where the majority of action movies carry that slick, yet deliriously vicious style seen in the John Wick movies, it helps to have a bold visual look to differentiate your movie from the countess others that feature relentless, unkillable heroes. Thankfully, Pattel has you covered as he evokes the squalid grit of both Gareth Evans’ Raid movies or even Prachya Pinkaew’s Ong-Bak as he takes his dogged hero’s mission from the grimy slums to the glitzy VIP rooms of an expensive club. The class divide motif that binds the whole plot together may be as subtle as a punch to the face, I’ll grant you, but on the other hand, when has an action/thriller steeped in revenge needed anything more than the most rudimentary reasons for everyone to suddenly start killing one another? Patel’s use of location means that he excitedly fuses tales from Indian legends with shots of urban decay and the result is something that’s familiar enough to western audiences weaned on traditional action (clubs, alleyways), but that still carries a strong identity of the country it features.
The results are often striking – both physically and visually – and Patel has obviously done his homework when it comes to lensing a corrupt, sweaty, hellscape, or staging numerous bruising encounters with some genuinely hard hitting fist fights.
Be it deliberately absorbing enough blows to the head to put Homer Simpson into a coma during his fights at Sharlto Copely’s ramshackle set up, to a brawl in a public bathroom that easily matches up to similar scenes seen in True Lies or Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Faces are slashed, torsos are stabbed and skulls make a helluva mess of any porcelain they frequently come in contact with and Pattel makes you feel every impact and laceration with crystal clarity.
However, repeated blugeonings aren’t the only trick that Patel has to play as after the huge middle action sequence, he ramps the pace down to a more spiritual feel as his nameless protagonist is nursed back to health by a hidden commune of transgender people which adds a much needed extra (and softer) dimension as the director now gives us the trippy, Indian version of a training montage. A moment that sees Kid regain training on a punching bag, keeping rhythm to a musician playing the tabla is a truly genius use of the culture within the realms of the action genre and the connections the film makes with the nature of being transgender to the numerous gods that share a similar identity is a moving touch.
However, frustratingly, the main thing that manages to memorably separate Monkey Man from the heard is also the same thing that slows it down to a crawl when it should be picking up speed and while Pattel should obviously be commended for bringing a spiritual edge to a genre renowned for face-breaking testosterone, the result ends up feeling rather distractingly disjointed, rather than finding a more elegant touch when trying to merge vastly different tones.
Still, if only more action films displayed the flair that Monkey Man does, and while some of its more loftier goals get lost in the beautiful chaos (the poverty is noted and lamented, but never directly addressed) and some of its moments hue too close to other movies (the fighting pit really just is a direct copy of Ong-Bak), you can’t fault Pattel’s ambition, especially seeing as he’s now ripped as hell.
Whether the director wishes to stay lodged in the action/thriller genre, or should he move on to pastures new (a Dev Patel horror, or fantasy movie with an Indian flavour would certainly have my vote), he’s certainly made an impact on film as strong as one of the skull rattling haymakers he throws as his on-screen persona.
Monkey manic
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