Monkey Man
The more I think about “Monkey Man,” the more it feels like a throwback to the era of Hollywood where action films weren’t all set up as blockbuster offerings, set to capture the box-office by storm. There were mid-tier action films that weren’t expected to be massive hits, but did well enough to justify its budget, and establish its star as someone with audience cred, because that’s what audiences wanted. As visual effects and franchises have taken center stage in Hollywood, that tier of action film was relegated to direct-to-video, and now streaming. This is a film that makes me realize how much I’ve missed that level of variety. As for the star, if you’ve been paying attention to the moves Dev Patel has made since he starred in the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire,” Patel doesn’t need to give you anything more than magnetic screen presence. Here, however, he’s directing the film, and while I have issues with some of his directorial choices, I understand why he made them, and really enjoy what I’m watching most of the way through.
In the story Patel has conceived, and given over to screenwriters Paul Angunawela and John Collee, he’s pulling in fable and faith and politics into a story of revenge. His character, known simply as “Kid,” watched his mother, and their home, get burned by political and religious extremists while he was a kid. Now, he is an adult looking for vengeance. When we first see him, he is in an underground boxing ring with a monkey mask on his face. He takes a beating, and gets his money, as well as shit from the sleazy ringmaster (the always wickedly fun Sharlto Copley). The money is what keeps him going, and the beating is what he does to repress the emotions of his past. But now, he’s ready to make his move, infiltrating a criminal enterprise of prostitution, drugs, violence and corruption to put him in a position to get to the brutal officer who destroyed his village. The officer (Rana, played by Sikandar Kher) is now in league with a messianic commoner who’s promising the disruption of the country for its benefit.
As one can tell, the story is fairly straightforward, as it should be for this sort of action film. What matters is the way Patel brings it to life as a director. As an actor, all of his magnetism shines through in this film in the same way Keanu Reeves has excelled in films like the “John Wick” franchise, Joel Kinnaman led the dialogue-free “Silent Night” back in December. As a director is how “Monkey Man” is ultimately going to be judged for Patel, and up until the third act of the film, it’s a mixed bag. I really miss the days when establishing geography for the action to take place in over making it flow as rapidly as possible in the editing room. For much of this film, the action is fairly incoherent when it’s out of the boxing ring, and it’s hard to get our bearings. Patel excels more when he’s going for the melodrama of John Woo’s Hong Kong work with over-stylized character work and dialogue scenes, and especially when he is establishing the relationship between Kid and his mother, and the legend of the Monkey Man, and how he challenged the Gods. In the third act of this film, however, Patel truly finds his footing as an action director, and this film had me in its grasp. It’s clearly inspired by past extended action sequences like the hospital in “Hard-Boiled” and the stairs in “John Wick: Chapter 4,” but it finds a style and brutality all its own with the cinematography by Sharone Meir and score by Jed Kurzel leading the way. There’s definitely plenty of potential in what Patel gives us as a director here; I hope he’s able to build on it in the future.
