Monkey Man opens in theaters April 5. This review is based on a screening at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival.
Dev Patel wears his heart and his influences on his sleeve in Monkey Man. But in his first movie as writer, director, and star, the Oscar nominee’s sincerity collides with muddled politics and tepid execution. An action revenge movie in the vein of John Wick – a film the characters in Monkey Man mention by name – Patel’s India-set crime saga is an attempt at cinematic synthesis that ends up more of a facsimile, both culturally and aesthetically. There are gorgeous, evocative shots that don’t quite coalesce, and just as many instances of bone-crunching combat that fails to make an impact due to the way it’s sloppily strung together.
The “monkey man” of the title is a bare knuckle brawling persona adopted by Patel’s impoverished, nameless, slum-dwelling, ape-mask-wearing, fight-throwing character. Flashbacks to his childhood, however, paint a wider religious picture: This alter ego was influenced by stories told by his mother (Adithi Kalkunte) of the apelike demigod Hanuman, a key figure in the Hindu epic the Ramayana, from which Monkey Man draws several major plot points. Recalling religious chants from his youth, and memories of religiously-themed comic books – a modern doorway to Hinduism for young Indian readers – the character clings to tales of Hanuman to guide him through both kindness and vigilante vengeance.
Via a briskly shot and edited pickpocketing relay that recalls the films of Danny Boyle, Patel ends up with the stolen wallet of high-rolling madam Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar), whose illicit brothel serves the political elite of Yatana, a city that’s essentially Mumbai in all but name. His reward is a lowly kitchen job – the film has notions of class inequality on its mind, towards which it lightly gestures – and as he worms his way up the ranks of Queenie’s establishment and towards its hidden VIP room, a tale of vengeance fades into view. While it takes about three-fourths of a two-hour runtime to fully reveal itself, abstract, fiery flashbacks of police violence provide a number of clues. The target is corrupt commissioner Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher), a man in the pocket of revered religious and political figure Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), whose name, quite literally, means power.
This shaky attempt at weaving a political tapestry is where Monkey Man’s problems first emerge. Shakti ends up a half-hearted metaphor for India’s contemporary, right wing Hindutva government: He reads like a stand-in for politician and religious fanatic Yogi Adityanath with hints of Modi-esque industrial string-pulling. His religious sermonizing is framed as a façade for corruption, whereas the hero’s adherence to the stories of his youth are the wind beneath that character’s wings, fashioned as a righteous call to violence. But this dynamic misses the mark. Shakti’s religious mission is a front, but the Indian fascism Monkey Man attempts to lampoon is sincere in its notions of Hindu superiority. Meanwhile, the language and imagery adopted by Patel’s character fall discomfitingly in line with Hindutva itself, down to the religious slogans chanted in his support. When a member of the crowd bellows “Jai Shri Ram,” they echo words invoked during the lynchings of Muslims and other minorities.
It’s a well-meaning approach that ends up shockingly misguided. (For an American equivalent, imagine if Colin Firth wiped out that church full of right-wing Evangelical extremists in Kingsman, then yelped “Make America great again!”) Flashbacks to the hero’s childhood, and his forest-dwelling community, reveal police incursions and land-stealing that have painful real-world parallels involving India’s Muslims, its tribal communities, and its oppressed castes. But Patel depicts this theft interrupting a marionette performance of the Ramayana, as though Hinduism itself were under attack. He might be trying to reclaim the religion’s iconography from the talons of Hindutva, but Monkey Man’s use of Hanuman as an inspiration for revenge has a disorienting effect. It’s as though Monkey Man wants to have its cake, eat it, and be congratulated for doing so.
The action is occasionally commendable. Monkey Man’s cinematic influences lie far outside India – primarily, Indonesian martial arts movies, Korean ultraviolence, and the films of Bruce Lee. Its John Wick homages are overt as well, taking cues from that series’ symbols, lighting, and costumes. (Unfortunately, Patel’s take on Keanu Reeves’ signature black suit, black shirt combo is matched by dark lighting and dark backdrops that obscure key moments of viciousness.) The fight choreography cribs from filmmakers like The Raid’s Gareth Evans and The Night Comes For Us’ Timo Tjahjanto , with swift, unbroken medium shots allowing combat to play out in close quarters – a rarity in Hollywood filmmaking. While Patel, the burgeoning action star, embodies each motion with a sense of fluidity, emotional drive, and committed physicality, the overall result is uncanny, as though Patel the director had copied the answers to a math assignment without showing his work. The camera, while chaotic and shaky, is indiscriminate in its movements, rarely slowing down to capture impact, and often rolling and somersaulting in ways that oppose the action rather than following it.
Patel imbues his character with a humorous, self-effacing streak. He knows the value of an action underdog, à la Jackie Chan, but the fights are also few and far between. One of them, involving an ax, works like a charm and is filmed with clarity. But it also enters the story at random, arising as a matter of disconnected coincidence rather than character-driven plot.
That plot also genuinely strives to hold authoritarianism to account. At one point, the hero is taken in by a “hijra” community in hiding, spending some valuable downtime with this group of tough-but-gentle transgender women who are on the run from the police. (A cameo that will confound anyone familiar with Indian classical music ensues.). But Monkey Man also uses footage of actual political demonstrations against the Modi government while stripping them of their symbology and flattening their political concerns.
At a time of increased government censorship in India, nominally opposing sectarian oppression is admirable, since it will likely ensure Monkey Man is denied an official Indian release. But beyond a point, even Patel’s dreamlike, drug-induced POV shots become vehicles to explore imagery that’s being weaponized against real people (sometimes in movie theaters). The action is never intoxicating enough to transcend or transform this ugliness the way S.S. Rajamouli manages to in RRR, a film with similar issues.
The project feels deeply personal, from Patel drawing on the action influences of his youth, to presenting an Indian setting front and center through a lens of childhood memories. That he returns to the Mumbai slums – the backdrop to his most high-profile films, Slumdog Millionaire and Lion – is also an interesting, self-reflexive flourish. While born and raised in England, Patel has, for many years, been Hollywood’s go-to casting choice for characters hailing from India, and as much as martial arts and a Hindu upbringing factor into Monkey Man, Mumbai has also become a part of his public persona. (He also starred in Anthony Maras’ dramatization of the 2008 terrorist attacks in the city, Hotel Mumbai). His Indian accent has certainly come a long way since Slumdog; he sounds marginally more authentic as a native Mumbaikar, though not quite as much as quippy, comic-relief co-star Pitobash, who provides some much-needed levity. And the fact that Mumbai’s seedy underbelly takes center stage places Monkey Man’s vivid, lurid portraiture alongside the films of Ram Gopal Varma, director of gangster sagas like Satya and Company – though the cultural details and specifics feel both vague and over-explained for a Western gaze.
But Varma, too, is a hit-or-miss director; the fumbled action and politics of Patel’s debut may not be a death knell for his career behind the camera. His use of atmosphere and abstraction hint at a filmmaker who knows how to capture moments of mood and introspection, even if he struggles to craft thematic coherence and visual rhythm from these scenes. There’s a sense of promise to way some of the action builds in Monkey Man. It just rarely yields rousing crescendos or satisfying catharsis.
