When the trailer for Monkey Man first dropped back in January, it lit up a specific section of movie fandom for a few key reasons. The first, of course, was Dev Patel. There are few actors currently working for whom the public seems to root more vociferously. To see him star in an action thriller he also directed and helped write was a dream for those who’ve been shouting from the rooftops for the Slumdog Millionaire star to become the next James Bond. The fact that Jordan Peele, another creator with an incredibly high approval rating, helped him to wrestle the film free from Netflix hell and into theaters didn’t hurt. Then, there’s the trailer itself, which refreshingly reveals almost nothing about the film, but presents vibes so immaculately cool as to elicit countless utterances of “Oh sick!” from every corner of the globe.
At the time, the conventional wisdom seemed to place Monkey Man within the umbrella of a Wick-style revenge thriller, and while that bears fruit, it’s actually going for something a little more nuanced—a little more epic, even—than that comparison would suggest. Monkey Man’s plot is largely defined by two distinct halves. When we first meet Patel, whose character remains nameless throughout, he’s a man for whom pain has become the driving force of his existence. Destitute and out of work, what little money he can scrounge up is earned by becoming the titular Monkey Man in an underground fighting ring that seems to blend WWE and MMA to gnarly, pummeling results. If you bleed, you make more money, explains the promoter when Patel feels short-changed after a fight, driving home the character’s seemingly innate instinct for flagellation.
Even as the plot kicks into high gear and we watch Patel rise up the ranks of a local night club in search of what, to this point, is some vague form of vengeance, self-preservation seems to be of little concern. This makes more sense as we see his backstory come to life, his purpose driven by predictably horrifying and righteous circumstances. Still, his plan for revenge is less an elaborate scheme than a blunt object. These early scenes, highlighted by scrappy, claustrophobic close-ups and breakneck camera movements, only heighten the feeling that our Monkey Man is living moment-to-moment. When this first half finally reaches its crescendo, it does so in a maelstrom of brutal violence that takes us from the upper floors of the night club to the chaotic city streets, beating our hero to a pulp along the way. Save a few key moments, the Monkey Man holds his own against the many henchman and redshirts that get in his way. Still, we never get the idea that any form of satisfaction or happiness lies at the end of this road.
Dev Patel is Kid in MONKEY MAN, directed by Dev Patel
It’s at this point that Monkey Man breaks from the haywire pace of its first half, allowing the film to fully unravel its quite convoluted plot. It’s a lot to sift through, but includes a clear political throughline of hypocritical Indian nationalism, phony religious idolatry, and persecution, all of which dovetails with Patel’s character’s tragic backstory in a way that adds a righteous heft to his own search for justice. There’s many a chance for misstep here, as Patel tries to weave vision quests and training montages into a more grounded story of the oppressed queer and trans community that nurse him back to health after his injuries. While it doesn’t work entirely seamlessly, it never really threatens the momentum of the film and provides a useful foil to the lonely quest our hero is on for the first half of the story.
Monkey Man is a movie that relies on its final act and finds itself in an interesting spot as it hurdles toward its conclusion. We know a summit of violence and bloodshed waits for us at the story’s end, making its execution key. In truth, Monkey Man has all the ingredients of the kind of trite, mildly disappointing action flick we’ve seen dozens of times, a movie that becomes a set of sequences and little more. To his credit, Patel knows this and pays close attention to every small moment that helps ground the broad, visceral action of its finale. Nearly everything that happens in that vicious sequence is a payoff of carefully curated details. Even the relatively shoe-horned love interest that aids in Patel’s final ascent works because Patel never really pretends it’s anything but a charged look between two stone-cold hotties.
The potential was obvious from the first moments of the movie’s trailer, but with Monkey Man Patel manages to satisfy, even exceed, those lofty expectations.
