Butonly a mild one, and one alleviated by the raucous violence that Patel and his fight choreographer Brahim Chab build toward as the film comes to its climax. Patel bristled a bit at the description of Monkey Man as an Indian John Wick, but you can understand the comparison when you see a well-choreographed fight taking place in a neon-lit nightclub with a pulsing score propelling the action forward. You sense the similarities when you watch the Kid duke it out with a handful of guys in a kitchen, fluidly dispatching guy after guy with grim-faced stylishness. And you feel it right in your gut when he starts in with the knife work; Patel never shies away from showing us the brutality and the force required to perpetrate close-up knife work, or what happens when an axe moving at full speed smacks into an unsuspecting bystander.
MONEY MAN\u2014THE DIRECTORIAL DEBUT from star and co-writer Dev Patel\u2014is not without its issues. It\u2019s a little too long, a little circular in its plotting, a little loose where it needs to be tight. But one thing Monkey Man absolutely has going for it is a steadfast commitment to brutality of a very visceral sort: You will believe a monkey man can stab a guy in the throat and finish pushing the blade through his windpipe with his teeth.
Patel plays the Kid, a street rat grown wily. He takes dives in bare-knuckle boxing matches put on by the South African Tiger (Sharlto Copley), trying to scrape together some cash. When he wants to get a job at the King\u2019s Club, he has the manager Queenie\u2019s (Ashwini Kalsekar) purse stolen so he can ingratiate himself to her by returning it. He\u2019s willing to do whatever for whomever to work his way up the ladder, to earn his way out of poverty.
At least, that\u2019s how it seems at first. Turns out his climb is less fiscal and more physical: he desires to get his hands around the necks of the men who destroyed his whole world. The Kid wants into the club to get close to the police chief Rana (Sikandar Kher), who killed his mother, and his patron Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), a phony yogi who used political connections to eminent domain the kid\u2019s village to build a sweatshop.
As I suggested above, the plotting is slightly annoying in its circularity: The Kid\u2019s plan is a good one, good enough to get him close enough for the kill a half-hour in. But a feature film can\u2019t be a half-hour long, so he\u2019s forced out and away, into an internal journey where he learns that he must be given something and someone to fight for besides himself. Turns that thing is a temple occupied by trans priests of shiva who are being repressed by the nationalist government, or some such. There\u2019s a fair amount of Indian politics that, frankly, went over my head; suffice to say that like any good movie, the genre trappings are fused with the particular (surging nationalism in India) to bring out the universal (the desire to see oneself as bravely standing for the underdog).
Monkey Man is never a slog\u2014it\u2019s too frenetic for that, too gleefully rhythmic in the editing by Joe Galdo, D\u00E1vid Jancs\u00F3, and Tim Murrell\u2014but I\u2019d be lying if I said it didn\u2019t occasionally feel like we\u2019re spinning our wheels with the flashbacks and the training montages and the references to the monkey god from which he derives his metaphorical power. Again: It takes us 90 minutes to get right back to where we were 30 minutes into the movie. It\u2019s an issue.
All in all, Monkey Man is a capable first effort behind the lens for Patel: It\u2019s effective, if a little messy, and something you\u2019ll want to see with an audience so as to fully appreciate the air getting sucked out of the room every time something particularly nasty happens.
If Batman met Bollywood, then perhaps he'd also swap the bat mascot for that of a primate. In "Monkey Man," Kid is not a millionaire playboy with time and money to throw at fancy vehicles and battle toys, but he is on a mythically-inspired journey to avenge his mother's murder and to stand up for the poor, weak and innocent who can't fight for themselves.
Not to mix and match action films, but his thirst for vengeance is as deranged as John Wick's all-consuming quest to avenge his slaughtered puppy. Its plot development is similarly one-minded, on a singular track to inflict as much carnage as possible onto its viewers with not nearly enough humor and levity to counterbalance the bloody ballet blockbuster that ensues. It's a wild ride, an action flick that isn't troubled with taking a break. It hits the genre right in the coconuts.
Written, directed and starring Dev Patel in his feature film debut, "Monkey Man" follows Kid (Patel), a young man who makes a meager living as the punching bag in an underground flight club. He dons his monkey mask and allows the bigger names to knock him out for cash. Finally given the opportunity, Kid weasels his way into the city's hottest nightclub frequented by the most elite scumbags in town: politicians, police chiefs and religious leaders who systematically repress and destroy the lives of the lower class in the name of money.
Patel, who has grown up over the years since his breakout role in "Slumdog Millionaire," is leading man material, an action figure rival to Bruce Wayne and Keanu Reeves. Perhaps more so because he is willing to fail with spectacular grit. The monkey headwear, thankfully, is reserved only for the seedy, underground boxing ring; Kid proudly shows his own face in the hand-to-hand combat that fills much of the film's runtime.
As a director, Patel has a very particular style: fast camera movements, long, unedited sequences that dive through alleys, corridors, stairwells, brothels, bathrooms and every which way Kid attempts to outpace his pursuers and tight shots of faces writhing in pain or dispelling unbridled anger. The choreography of these shots is a difficult dance that Patel tackles like an experienced director.
Having failed to assassinate the police chief (Sikandar Kher) who led the massacre of his mother and her village, Kid - bloodied, injured, physically and mentally depleted - finds a safe haven of outcasted people where he can recover, reconvene and prepare himself for the high-octane round two that is to come.
The political currents are impossible to miss. Patel takes direct aim at the Indian government with the fictitious yogi Baba Shakti (Marakand Deshpande), a hyperbolic ne'er-do-well in sanctimonious robes. "Shakti" means "power" in Hindi, and his far-reaching stronghold on the fictitious Mumbai-esque city is an insidious presence. Kid is taken in by the Hijra community of transgender and intersex people, "outsiders" who represent the overarching social repression of India's regime. Alpha (Vipin Sharma) is a trans woman who guides Kid back onto his path, and Kid is fighting, if not just for his mother's memory, but for all underrepresented, forgotten and marginalized people.
Like the story of the god who is said to have the face of a monkey and who embodies self-control, faith and commitment to a cause, Kid resurrects himself. Stronger and trained for the fight, Kid returns to finish what he started. In that sense, he kills it, pun intended. I like a good bloodbath as much as the next movie nerdess, but there was something lacking. Obviously derived from ancient lore, we still need more: more explanation, more backstory or simply more of Kid's underbelly. His hardened shell is impossible to penetrate, guarding the one-trick, one-track pony as it gallops o'er hill and hell to exact his revenge.
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