Monkey Man review: An intense, thrilling tale of revenge
Review Overview
Action
8Consistency
6Dev Patel
9Ivan Radford | On 17, May 2024
Director: Dev Patel
Cast: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Sobhita Dhulipala, Sikandar Kher, Vipin Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar
Certificate: 18
Could Dev Patel be the next James Bond? After Monkey Man, you don’t doubt that he has the action movie chops for it, but you suspect his passions lie in a darker vein. For this astonishing thriller, which he stars in, directs and co-writes, is as blood-soaked as revenge tales get. And then some.
The subgenre is a familiar one for film fans, but what’s immediately clear is that Patel is a cinephile as well: the script, co-written with John Collee and Paul Angunawela, explicitly name-drops John Wick early on, while the visuals nod to everything from The Raid to Enter the Dragon. Each influence is worn on the film’s sleeves, not because of a lack of originality but because of a surplus of affection – plus, the way these battles unfold, any extra layers on its sleeves can only be a good thing.
Patel stars as Kid, a young man who is still haunted by a childhood trauma – and possessed by a desire to avenge it. Taking inspiration from the myth of Hanuman, a Hindu deity, he rises up as a powerful force to quench his hunger for justice. That most involves going after corrupt chief of police Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher) and the even more corrupt Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), then going after a political leader who hides his cruel ambitions beneath a religious facade, and anyone else who gets in his path along the way.
The script is far from perfect, with Kid’s allies, including sex worker Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala) and fast-talking drug dealer Alphonso (Pitobash), thinly sketched, and one sequence in a brothel accompanied by the song Roxanne taking the film’s literal tendencies a bit too far. The second act, meanwhile, loses pace as we pause for Kid to be trained up by a remote community of ostracised outcasts. But these are minor quibbles for a film that has endured and overcome a large number of production setbacks over a prolonged period of time, let alone one that boldly weaves a political punch in with its fisticuffs.
The choreography from Brahim Chab and cinematography from Sharone Meir propel the narrative forwards with a relentless energy, which Patel harnesses visually as he throws the camera around as much as his own body. His physical presence, meanwhile, is a phenomenal, frenetic and visceral anchor for the carnage on display. And boy, what carnage it is, with each set piece upping the grim brutality right up to the intense finale. The result leaves you wondering what a Patel Bond movie would look like, but mostly leaves you excited to see whatever he does next both behind and in front of the camera. He looks as good at the helm as he does in a sleek, blood-splattered suit.