Jonah Naplan   April 6, 2024

The violent, cultured “Monkey Man” is the cinematic equivalent of taking shots of espresso first thing in the morning and then completely wiping out by 3 p.m. Parts of it are frenetic, hyper, and exhausting while other sections are slow, meager, and tantalizing. As a whole experience, the film ultimately works, but only because director, co-writer, and star Dev Patel brings 110% to every frame of this project, servicing all the clichés of the action/revenge-thriller genre that have long defined the movies that Patel takes very clear inspiration from such as all four “John Wick”s, “The Raid,” and the work of Bruce Lee. There’s a distinct feeling throughout that Patel is cramming in everything he can muster in order to establish himself as a new creative voice who’s just entered the scene, but the truth is that simply getting this movie greenlit and produced (just look up this film’s crazy road to the big screen) puts him on the market as a name to keep an attentive eye on.

Producer Jordan Peele and his company Monkeypaw Productions “saved” this film from Netflix acquisition by convincing Universal Studios that it was a force to be reckoned with. Peele has stated in interviews that he found the action sequences to be creative and heavily immersive, reminding him of a movie that he’d go to see with friends at a younger age and be really loud in the theater while watching. “Monkey Man” does have that sort of “rambunctious crowd” feel to it, the type of movie that would play best in front of a roaring audience who are begging for more. And when Patel allows his movie to go off the rails, “Monkey Man” is a bundle of fun. But when it sits back and stokes political commentary between the frenetic shoot-outs and fist fights, the pacing starts to lag, becoming a messy fusion of simple concepts and big ideas.

The film follows Kid (Patel), an underground fighter who dons a gorilla mask as his emblem of war, and gets bloodily beaten in the ring every night by opponents set up by a conniving promoter (Sharlto Copley). Through flashbacks, we learn about his secluded but happy childhood in the forest that was suddenly upturned by the police chief (Sikandar Kher) when he invaded their village and killed Kid’s mother. Kid makes it his personal mission to take him and all the others who destroyed his life down, hardening his body and physique to morph from a typical dude into a killing machine. His prowess as both a book and street-smart thinker allows him to get what he wants, on top of a pair of soulful eyes that convey so much emotion and spirit; one of the most useful tools in Patel’s repertoire.

Kid’s clever thievery allows him to climb to the top of the food chain, fraternizing with all the higher-ups of his fictional Indian city (it seems to be a half-slum-half-commercial territory where the powerful and wealthy take advantage of the poor and helpless), including a club worker (Sobhita Dhulipala) who might or might not be trustworthy and a close ally (Pitobash) who seems to be trouble at first but whose fate is made ever worse by his involvement with the fugitive vigilante.

Our leading man is completely believable in this register, echoing other “men with skills” throughout history who have surmised similar plots to right past wrongs by killing their way to the top of some pernicious corporation and finally facing off with the big bad who destroyed the protagonist’s life in some way many decades ago but doesn’t actually remember who they are or what they did to them because they’ve brought such suffering to so many others since then. Patel steps into the role of “killing machine” so easily, as if he’s been playing characters like this his entire life and has improved his craft each time. It’s interesting to watch how Patel the director directs Patel the actor as the film chugs along, even though both of them seem to be throwing too much at the audience in the first and most of the second act.

Too often, “Monkey Man” just feels overly hyper and abrasive, making for a couple of shoddily edited fight scenes early on that are so indifferently composed that I couldn’t make out what was happening. Patel and cinematographer Sharone Meir—who recently shot another such revenge thriller, John Woo’s “Silent Night”—remedy this issue soon afterwards, which is what makes the last thirty minutes really sparkle with all the glitter and guts of filmmakers who love this art form but are excited to see it walk down a more modern path. What they never do manage to fix, however, is the ferocity with which this film imbues its political voice, criticizing a totalitarian government whose sole objective seems to be invading poor residential areas in order to build more skyscrapers, restaurants, and entertainment attractions.

The juxtaposition between the tyranny of a man named Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) and his vassals and Kid’s personal story of poverty, regret, and redemption thinks it’s saying a lot more than it actually is, which is especially evident in the second act when Patel begins to rely way too much on flashbacks in order to progress our knowledge of his character; a technique that doesn’t really work until we finally get to see the entire night Kid’s village was taken in all its disturbing horror, and a training montage at a temple that showcases not just Dev Patel’s carefully sculpted arms and pecs but the work of editors David Jancso and Tim Murrell that improves as it goes along.

The choppy pacing is probably “Monkey Man”’s biggest setback, being that it opens with such a bang and then slows down for some time before picking back up again to deliver its best moments in the third act. It is certainly a bumpy road, but Patel will surely learn from these mistakes and start to improve them when “Monkey Man” inevitably garners enough money to warrant several more sequels. I’m sure there’s lots more stories to tell about this character, and it seems as though Patel would be perfectly content to continue writing them forever. When he’s let off his leash to create something really special, he realizes his technical as well as virtuosic acumen on both sides of the camera and “Monkey Man” soars in innovative directions. But when Patel becomes his own worst enemy, bogging himself down with way too much on the plate of a directorial debut, the movie falters in a whole bunch of departments, even though his woeful tale exists to build bridges. “Monkey Man” monkeys all around until it can’t no more.

Now playing in theaters.