Monkey Man - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

Although extremely popular, the revenge thriller premise is a mainstay of narrative film storytelling. From Kill Bill to the John Wick franchise to basically every Liam Neeson film from the last twenty years, the box office has proved these films can typically turn a profit. While I used to get a kick out of these types of movies in years past, I find they hold less and less of an interest for me, as my brain leans less toward wanting to be switched off and just enjoying some monsters destroying each other or other monotonous violence and instead favors being engaged on deeper themes and life lessons. The new film Monkey Man from actor turned director Dev Patel is a sleek action thriller with enough violence and blood to soak through even the most plastic covered movie recliners. While the film utilizes some different tactics in setting up and delivering the age old revenge plot, in the end I found myself far more in the liked it rather than loved it camp. And technically there’s a lot to love here. Patel shows us some impressive skill behind the camera as well as in front, in this extremely aesthetically pleasing movie. But the pacing of the second act combined with the tired narrative took it’s toll on me and if it hadn’t been for an absolute banger of a final act, this film would’ve fallen into the absolutely mediocre category. But I will say I recognize I’m in the minority as most general audiences and critics will go absolutely bananas for this Monkey Man. 

SYNOPSIS - The film opens with some up come camera shots of an Indian mother telling her son a story, we see the forest greenery behind them. The story is of Hanuman, an Indian deity that resembles a monkey of sorts, his mother says, “When he was little . . . very little . . . he was very hungry.” We see pictures of the book she reads from as we continue to see interlaced shots of the young boy as he listens to him mothers voice telling the tale. Hanuman reaches for a mango high in the trees but it’s actually the sun, which he eats and as punishment, the other gods strip young Hanuman of his powers. The scene ends, we’re left in darkness and hear the son ask, “And then what happened, Ma?”. We’re then thrown into a group of yelling and seemingly upset Indian men, they’re pointing at the camera, shaking their fists and throwing things in our direction. As the camera pans around, we see a small boy selling food items, then money changing hands as men place wagers on something unseen and then finally, a dirty boxing ring floor. The shot moves across the floor of the ring until we finally see a man wearing a creepy looking monkey mask hit the mat, blood spattering on the ground and dripping from the mask mouth opening. We stay close to the floor with the man for just a second before a set of hands reaches in and lifts him up and then we’re in the ring with them fighting. The kinetic camera work has us bouncing around the ring as the monkey masked man flails about wildly, throwing punches and grabbing the leg of the other masked man called King Cobra in this sparring match where their hands are only taped. With the crowd yelling on we continue to watch the man in the monkey mask take a beating as his uncoordinated attacks are eventually his undoing. King Cobra picks him up and throws him out of the ring where he lands with a crash on a table of money. The announcer, Tiger (Sharlto Copley) a slick haired greasy looking man comes out onstage, basking in the yellow stage lights as if he’d won the match and announces the winner, King Cobra.

The monkey masked man pulls himself up off the floor and slowly begins walking past the crowd full of jeering spectators and then down a corridor and into a bathroom. We see the man called Kid (Dev Patel) remove the monkey mask and run his hand over his soaking wet hair and beard as he looks down into the sink. He reaches into his mouth and feels his teeth. As blood drips from his mouth he begins to have flashbacks of a hand covered in blood laying by some water, a match striking a box with a gold crown on it and finally a fire blazing with an tan uniformed officer standing in front. As he stands over the sink absorbing the shock waves of these flashback puzzle pieces that we won’t get the full picture of until later, Tiger comes in and praises the work he did in the ring. “They hate you, it’s incredible”, he says before walking with Kid into a locker room and handing him his pay for the fight. The scene ends and we’re introduced to a guru like man on a TV screen, a political figure named Baba Shakti (Makrand Deshpande) who’s got his eye on the presidency. Kid sits at a bar watching an old TV monitor when a teen boy called Lucky approaches who calls Kid “Boss”. As Kid hands Lucky some money, the boy slides a phone to him with some pictures of a woman they call Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar), he explains she’s known as “the queen of kings”. She’s an important businesswoman of some kind and Lucky tells him where she frequently eats lunch. The next sequence is of a begging man in a wheelchair rolling up to Queenie’s table at lunchtime, accidentally spilling her drink and then quickly lifting her wallet. Within a few more scenes, Kid has her wallet and is standing outside the high roller club that she’s a manager at, he’s looking to infiltrate and move up the company ladder, his ultimate motives still not entirely clear. As the film works it’s way through the first act and into the second, the pieces of this revenge puzzle begin to fall into place and Kid’s character motivations become clearer. Even after a serious loss of momentum through the second act, the fighting recommences and blood is spilled throughout the third act in a way that was so gratifying I almost forgave it for the other issues I had.

As a director, Dev Patel manages to avoid many of the pitfalls that have befallen a director working with the revenge premise by sidestepping most of the tropes that these movie plots frequently succumb to. The film’s script by Paul Angunawela does have some predictability to it in terms of the broad strokes, we can generally anticipate most of the story beats, even if the film attempts to reorder them a bit from what we’re used to seeing. Besides his direction, Dev Patel is excellent in the film as well, he leads the way and gives an excellent performance that won’t make any critics favorites of the year lists, but he’s able to sell all his scenes of inner rage, turmoil and pain with the range of an accomplished actor. But the pacing, oh the pacing (shakes head sadly). By the end of the first act and start of the second I had started to feel the drag and began checking the clock on my phone periodically. As much as the extra time allowed the film to fully developed Kid’s character and that made the finale even more of a knockout punch, there’s probably close to a forty-five minute stretch where the film slowed to a crawl for me. The editing could’ve really used to trim down ten to fifteen minutes, tighten up some sequences and given us just the needed details instead of excess material and all the trimmings. When it comes to the cinematography, Monkey Man is simply gorgeous. The camera work was all in all terribly impressive, though through one or two fight sequences the hand held camera bouncing realism of it became so aggressively jarring that it started to grade on me. Jed Kurzel composed the perfectly adequate score for the film with it’s Indian undertones and uptempo anthems for the adrenaline fueled fight scenes. The fight choreography was excellent, some sequences are pretty John Wick-esque, maybe not quite as frequent through the runtime but possibly even a little bloodier. In one instance, a character gets knifed in such a shocking way while the film is going so hard, it made me laugh out loud. This film earns it’s hard R rating with the extreme violence and pure quantity of blood that’s spilt. Monkey Man is brutal, savage and offers cinemagoers of appropriate age a wild ride of a time on the big screen this spring.

SUMMARY - Audiences of all kinds will be eating out of this films hand, there’s a reason why an incredible mind like Jordan Peele came on board as a producer for the film. Even though the film’s general plot and premise have worn out their welcome a bit with this particular Man, the masses and most critics will have a blast with this funky Monkey.