Hey, hey, hey, the Monkey Man’s here!” I swear to God, that’s a line from the first episode of Skins, where the character of Chris, walks into a party, with Dev Patel by his side. All this time, Skins fans the world over have assumed Chris was referring to himself as the Monkey Man, and how could we be so horrible wrong? Unless… it’s a coincidence, and now Skins has produced two wonderous Monkey Mens for our entertainment 😮 Could a coincidence as big as this exist? 😱😂
In a repressive India, Kid (Dev Patel) scraps for a place of comfort, which includes competing in fixed boxing matches, where he fights in a costume monkey head, and is paid to cop a beating. Kid plots a path to get himself inside a wealthy establishment, working first as a kitchen hand for Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar), but devising a plan to become to waiter, for the richest top-end patrons, while secretly harboring a hope to get the corrupt chief of police, Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher), alone, to enact revenge on him for a crucial past gone by. When Kid’s assassination attempt… doesn’t go to script, the Monkey Man will be on the run from authorities and challenged to search within himself to find a confidence for a greater purpose.
Best bathroom fight since True Lies? Well, no, Mission: Impossible – Fallout had that bathroom brawl where Henry Cavill cocks his arms like guns, but this one starts the conversation! We really don’t know that much about the Monkey Man at the start of this scene, other than how he can take a punch – he’s also resourceful, since he’s made his own opportunities up the ranks of his new job, and trained a stray dog to bring him his gun; and he’s vengeful, with the then-unknown specifics of his mother’s death fueling his rage. As the story goes, the movie blurs between your typical action-packed retaliation thriller, and an odyssey, where the tale’s erratic left-turns have no distinguishable path – a fact that left me trepidatious at a time where I needed to stay brave 😤 Right around the time I was feeling this internal unrest, the hijra Alpha (Vipin Sharma) is informing us of a secret toxin in the soil, and the Monkey Man rips his chest open in hallucination, while having visions of a puppet show, and reminding me of the senile and whimsical Beau Is Afraid (😳) – a comparison that’s not one to make favourably. But the movie, knows its track, only detouring independently from a familiar one, while any time there’s action, there’s nothing ordinary about it 😮 Genuine shock and mouth agape at seeing a man cop an axe to the throat, and Monkey Man doesn’t shy away from brutality, even down to when we find out exactly what happened to Kid’s mother 😢 I was most impressed by the way this movie is able to handle its high-key moments, and the use of music too, for setting the scene and the action appropriately, somewhat like Slumdog Millionaire.
Similarly, I also liked how this movie is able to depict the varying extremes of Indian culture, seemingly concurrently, and in the background, of the movie’s flow – just when you’re getting a sense of a fun young successful Indian lifestyle, you’re reminded of the widescale poverty and desperation, with shots of the streets or scummy whorehouses; and then, when you’re consequently depressed, you’re reminded of India’s exotic celebrations, that once again make you consider India as a place you’d like to visit. Myself, since I haven’t been to India, it could be all construed as fantasy to me, and I’m not to know how many elements of the movie’s ambiance and corruption are accurate, or where the movie has taken liberties in punching up the grime. I obviously don’t know about the trans stuff then either, and can only imagine trans awareness may be an emerging issue in India as it is in the West. But I will say this – a lot of the times Disney, and similarly-framed franchises, will tackle trans and diversity, I seem to feel like they expect the mere inclusion is enough to make audiences thankful. But any character in any movie still has to be worth their merit… I’d suggest Monkey Man provides a positive example of trans integration in mainstream media, and gets my stamp of approval, for whatever it’s worth 👍 Sure, it may be silly, from a certain point of view, that the trans asylum-seekers become an elite back-up assassin squad just on a whim, but it’s no more questionable than our Monkey Man becoming the most skilled fighter on the planet just from punching a bag of grain and believing in himself through montage – which is part and parcel of the action genre.
The race has been run, and best of luck to Pedro Pascal in getting a good script and contributing some solid acting to the cause, but I really feel like Dev Patel would’ve made a fantastic Reed Richards in the upcoming The Fantastic Four; and I shall outline my reasons why. No doubt Patel is a leading man; lanky, muscly, believable as a loveable earnest nerd, as seen in The Newsroom, and capable of comedy Marvel likes, taking the piss out of himself in Skins 😊 He ticks a diversity quota, if that’s still a thing (which, regrettably, still is, at least behind the scenes, and where the last Fan4stic movie gave us Micheal B. Jordan as white Kate Mara’s brother; remember?). Patel also gives a new angle/different look to the Marvel-scientist character-pool, where we already have Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Hank Pym and Shuri. Monkey Man only proves that Dev Patel can also excel at his own stunts, and that’s a huge win too, innit? But as this movie closes, it’s only then that I learn that Monkey Man is also DIRECTED BY PATEL?! 😱 So, I retract my argument, as Patel might already be too far beyond the Marvel machine 😊 Under the wing of proven revolutionary, producer Jordan Peele, the sky might be the limit for this chap, and we might be looking forward to more of what he can do behind the camera rather than in front of it. I’m uber impressed by Patel’s stunt work here, and charactisation, as Kid manages an imposing intensity. I remember being wowed when the likes of Charlize Theron did her own fights for Atomic Blonde too, but, I mean, this is three times as much.
This movie is ultimately borrowing from a lot of places, and not least of all the John Wick franchise. But where the fight choreography eventually got a bit same-same across the three John Wick sequels, I’m thrilled to see another movie thinking it can bring some fresh combinations to the screen. I also think it was a great idea to frame Monkey Man’s story in terms of the Hanuman fable, heightening the sense of danger by giving a perspective in how an outmatched Kid would feel up against these gargantuan figures who control of the city. And all this culminates into a pretty considerate debut from our new actor/writer/producer/director. There are action movies that come and go every year (like Nobody, for example) but this one caught my eye. 4.0
P.S. Yes, I couldn’t resist the idea of releasing three monkey-themed movie reviews in a row, as 2024 provides – sue me! 😄
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