Like whiplash caused by a cacophony of punches, Monkey Man’s blood-soaked tale of retribution will leave you reeling during its two-hour runtime.
Dev Patel’s directorial debut paints a grim but gripping narrative that explores the aftermath of childhood trauma caused by the hand of an unjust ruler. Kid (Dev Patel) earns his keep in the underbelly of India by donning an unkept gorilla mask, which transforms him into his fight club persona, the titular Monkey Man. Eventually, Kid becomes privy to the man who wronged him when he was a child, who turns out to be amongst India’s most elite.
Early in the film, Kid finds himself shopping around for an illegal firearm to dole out justice. During the exchange, the black market vendor offers Kid a gun that he totes as being featured in John Wick, which Kid refuses and opts for a smaller, less flashy option. This scene not only acknowledges the obvious comparisons Monkey Man will inevitably receive but does so in a way that will leave audiences with a certain expectation, an expectation that the film brilliantly betrays.
Instead of a calm and collected gun-fu samurai scene, what follows during Monkey Man’s first big fight scene is a collection of sloppy and disjointed vignettes that seem more akin to a found-footage horror film than a high-stakes action movie. Still, if this sounds like a negative against the movie, it’s not. Instead, Kid’s spiralling vendetta in Monkey Man feels tangible; as someone who has only had guns pointed toward him and those he loved, his utter failure to master the art of a good shoot-out forces him to rely on what he can do, which is to rely on his fists.
“Kid’s spiralling vendetta in Monkey Man feels tangible…”
After a near-death experience from his botched aping (no pun intended) of John Wick, Kid finds himself under the guidance of a group of Hindu mystics, who, through the power of some strong psychedelics and training, complete Kid’s transformation to the titular Monkey Man, setting things up nicely for the later half of the movie.
Without giving away too much more of the film, Monkey Man’s latter half complements the often shakey and unhinged POV of its early sequences by delivering more deliberate and well-orchestrated action scenes that feel closer to its apparent sources of inspiration. There is a sense of escalating tension in Monkey Man that I haven’t seen in a film since something like Taxi Driver. Particularly with Kid’s unease whenever he’s reminded of his mother, something that often leads to him boiling over in explosive bursts of violence.
“There is a sense of escalating tension in Monkey Man that I haven’t seen in a film since something like Taxi Driver.”
Although I wouldn’t classify The Green Knight as an action movie, Dev Patel seemingly brings the same kind of otherwordly energy from his role as Gawain into Monkey Man, with the movie often blending over-the-top violence against moments of calm and normalcy that tend to create surreal windows into a world that can only exist in cinema.
A good example of this takes place during a scene in which Kid exchanges a smile with another woman who helps him during a fight, both of whom are caked in spatters of blood but look at each other as if they are merely passing each other by on the street, perhaps the blood an analogue to paint during the festival of colours, instead of the grim reality that is the aftermath of a bloodbath.
Moments like the above are peppered throughout Monkey Man, which help give the film a unique quality that sets it apart from its contemporaries, cementing Dev Patel’s career as a director.
Visceral scenes of violence against more introspective scenes of reprieve are the best ways I can describe Monkey Man in a single sentence, but regardless of what you’re looking for in your action flicks, Monkey Man is a must-a-watch for fans of the genre.
