Dev Patel Strikes as a Triple Threat to be Reconned with in Heavy-laden Actioner
DIRECTED BY DEV PATEL/2024
It’s with a swift sock to the jaw we are made fully aware that Dev Patel’s hard-hitting actioner Monkey Man ain’t no run-of-the-mill John Wick knockoff. Doing triple duty as the film’s director, co-writer, and star, Patel delivers a heavy-laden crime revenge film seething with not just visceral violence, but religious and timely political commentary to boot. Here, it’s all nothing that can’t be solved by a righteously calloused tough guy.
Though once touted by its makers as “John Wick in Mumbai”, that’s not really true. Monkey Man portrays the locale where it was filmed- Batam, Indonesia- as a perpetually dark, hazy, and oversaturated hellscape. Criminal crackpots and their crooked cronies are everywhere, always obnoxiously hamming it up and waving guns around. Though Hinduism, particularly devotion to the simian deity Hanuman (God of Wisdom, Strength, Courage, Devotion and Self-Discipline), is scared to Patel’s title character, the world of the film is one that’s hawked faith in favor of the self. With Islam the dominant religion of Indonesia by some eighty-seven percent, Hinduism is a slivered minority. Interestingly, late in the story, Christian symbolism also enters in after the religion is booed when mentioned at a fight gathering. All of it is a distant second, third, or forth to crime.
The profane worldliness of Batam is immediately demonstrated when a street vendor in a wheelchair accidentally runs into a wealthy woman at an outdoor cafe. The cheap figurines of Shiva, Vishnu, and company that he’s trying to pedal spill everywhere. It’s all a distraction for swiping a valuable item from her handbag. We then learn that not only is the crook not really crippled, but the woman had also it coming. She’s really bad. Like everyone else in Monkey Man.
As the title character- a soul-crushed prizefighter known only as Kid- Patel (Slumdog Millionaire; The Green Knight) proves himself to be not just a savvy director of such brutal material, but a rightly convincing beater-upper. With a thick mustache, teary eyes, and a badass inner fire, Patel transcends his string-beany frame to do some real damage. By night, he dons a cheap rubber gorilla mask to fight in the ring for money. By later in the night, he chucks the mask to be an avenger against the purveyors of systemic evil and their scads of bloodthirsty thugs. By daylight… there is no daylight in Monkey Man’s Batam.
I was bitten by a boar
I was gouged and I was gored
But I pulled on through
Yes, I’m a sack of broken eggs
I always have an unmade bed
Don’t you?
Well, I hope we’re not too messianic
Or a trifle too satanic
We love to play the blues…
In his directorial debut, Patel leans heavily into handheld camerawork, resulting in a perpetually messy aesthetic. An abundance of care obviously went into the film’s fight scenes, each one delivering at least one memorable bit of original violence. In rare moments, the movie even delivers much-needed surprise humor. All of this, though, seems to come at the expense of all the other crap in the movie, which can often feel pretty rutterless.
When things get going, the editing follows suit. In action moments, it’s what classic Hollywood super-producer David O. Selznick might’ve called “goddamn jigsaw cutting.” Except, Selznick said that about Alfred Hitchcock’s British films prior to the 1940s. Were Selznick to assess the cutting of Monkey Man here in 2024, his profanities would likely multiply exponentially.
It is to great benefit of both Monkey Man and its inevitable immediate fans that Jordan Peele saw fit to snatch this film away from the streaming netherworld of Netflix, where it was originally greenlit. Though wildly imperfect, Monkey Man deserves the big screen and a devoted movie-watching atmosphere. When the hits connect, you really feel ‘em. The stripped-down appropriations of “Roxanne” by The Police is stirring. “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane, less so. Oddly, the song “Monkey Man” (quoted in this review) by The Rolling Stones is a no-show. Jed Kurzel provides the intense score.
Alas, Monkey Man persists as a ferociously difficult film to connect with. Any much-needed character empathy for Kid is relegated to his cloying childhood flashbacks, of which there are too many. In them we meet his radiant, beloved mother who not only fostered his Hindu beliefs, she told him that he was Hanuman. Is he? I mean, I guess so? At least, in a sense. The point is, much blood is spilled and many f-bombs are detonated by the time Kid gets to actively avenging her death.
Ma ma ma ma ma monkey!
Ah! I’m a monkey!
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!