In his directorial debut, Dev Patel, who also stars, delivers a message amid the mayhem of ‘Monkey Man’
By Bob Tremblay/Boston Movie News
You can see the promos now—”Monkey Man” is “John Wick in India.”
The comparison is accurate to a point. In the first “John Wick” film, the hero seeks revenge after his dog is killed and his car stolen. In “Monkey Man,” the hero seeks revenge after his mother is killed and his home destroyed. But Dev Patel has a lot more to say in “Monkey Man” than the creative forces behind the John Wick films. Basically, John just wants to retire but keeps getting drawn back into action against his will. Those darn blood oaths. In “Monkey Man,” the hero is targeting not just bad guys but corruption and injustice with a not-so-subtle swipe at Indian politics, too.
Any semblance of the movie’s evil politician and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a coincidence. I think. Perhaps Netflix didn’t think so. It was supposed to show the film but backed out. Filmmaker Jordan Peele stepped in to help provide a theatrical release. India’s censor board has not yet given the film its stamp of approval.
“Monkey Man” could also be promoted as “The Dev Patel Show.” He stars, produced and makes his directorial debut in the film. He also co-wrote it with Paul Angunawela and John Collee. Yes, it’s an auspicious debut. He even bulked up for the film and persevered after reportedly breaking his hand in the first fight scene.
That scene has the hero, who calls himself Bobby (not his real name; the credits refer to him simply as Kid), getting beaten to a pulp in an underground fight club run with plenty of sleaze by Tiger (Sharlto Copley). Kid fights to earn money, but it’s clear he has more on his mind than becoming the next Tyler Durden. For the fight, Kid wears a gorilla mask. Why, you ask? Flashback to a young Kid being told a story by his mother, Neela (Adithi Kalkunte), about Hanuman, a Hindu god with a half-monkey, half-human shape who embodies strength and courage. Care to assume if that kid is the title character?
One of the film’s many entertaining scenes has a purse getting stolen and ending up with Kid after being transferred by multiple people. He uses its contents to get a job at a high-end establishment run with maximum sleaze by Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar). Kid climbs up the employment ladder until he can begin exacting his revenge on Rana (Sikander Kher), a corrupt police chief who killed his mother, and Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), a guru turned politician who burned Kid’s village to the ground.
Here, the film, set in a fictitious Indian city, turns on its John Wick afterburners with Kid dispatching bad guys in all manner of painful ways. There’s even a John Wick reference when Kid goes looking for a gun. For fans of the Crazy 88s from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill: Volume 1,” a horde of crazed bad guys exits an elevator to attack Kid. I doubt there were 88 of them, but Kid still has his bloody hands full.
The action is relentless, perhaps too much so. Kid only stops killing people when he recovers from an injury in a temple where he’s befriended by Alpha (Vipin Sharma), one of its elders. Consumed by righteous rage, Kid is all business. Hey, even John Wick found time to get married. Still, we root for Kid, the common man fighting against the Man.
Thrill fans will find much to enjoy here as the fight scenes are well-staged by Patel and viscerally shot by cinematographer Sharone Meir.
Like Keanu Reeves, the star of the John Wick films, Patel’s Kid is no superhero with an Arnold Schwarzenegger physique or equipped with extraordinary powers or high-tech gadgets. He punches, stabs, and shoots with the best of them and will kill you with a shoe if he has to do so. He breaks a sweat, too.
While “Monkey Man” won’t win any thespian awards, all the characters acquit themselves well. Kher and Deshpande’s characters are particularly loathsome. The script fares better as it mixes brutality with myth, culture, and politics for a full-bodied and very bloodied experience.
Patel has come a long way from “Slumdog Millionaire.” It’s refreshing to see a filmmaker deliver a message with the mayhem. The result is—OK, I’ll say it—a knockout punch.
‘Monkey Man’
Rating: R for sexual content, nudity, profanity, drug use, and lots and lots of violence
Cast: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Sikandar Kher, Vipin Sharma, Adithi Kalkunte and Makarand Deshpande
Director: Dev Patel
Writers: Dev Patel, Paul Angunawela, and John Collee
Running time: 113 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters Friday, April 5
Grade: A-
Bob Tremblay is the former film critic for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass., and a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics.
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