Monkey Man: Dev Patel's Director/Star Action Turn Succeeds Despite John Wick on its Back
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
“You like John Wick?” a character says to Dev Patel in Monkey Man, the actor’s first film as director. “’Cause this just came in.”
Patel’s character, who sometimes calls himself Bobby but is credited only as “Kid,” is shopping for a gun, with vengeance on his mind. The shopkeeper is trying to sell him something flashy, something with a movie tie-in, the way an earlier generation might have sprung for a Walther PPK, à la James Bond.
But Kid says he prefers something small. He settles on a .38 revolver.
Dev Patel plays Kid, a fighting machine bent on revenge in Monkey Man.
The John Wick reference (and similar descriptions by those in the industry) does something of a disservice to both that film franchise and this audacious first feature. Wick is something of a gentleman assassin, existing in a world of guilds and shibboleths, golden tokens and bespoke assistants.
Kid is an altogether grittier individual, whom we first meet brawling in an underground fight club presided over by Tiger (Sharlto Copley), who underpays him because he didn’t bleed enough. Kid wears a simian face mask that gives him his nickname and the film its title. But the mask is also a reference to Hanuman, a divine monkey in the Hindu pantheon, and what another culture might refer to as Kid’s spirit animal.
Kid is a disturbed and disturbing anti-hero, whose scarred hands he attributes at various times to working with chemicals and being in a fiery car crash, though you already know neither of those is true.
The film (which Patel also co-wrote) slowly builds up his character’s backstory through a series of sometimes barely comprehensible flashbacks — a lot of staring eyes and quick pans — that eventually coalesce into the information that his dear mother is dead and Someone Is To Blame. Kid may be prone to random acts of violence, but he has a premeditated score to settle as well.
He treads this path first by landing a job at a swanky club managed by the redoubtable Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar), then ingratiating himself with her right-hand man, Alphonso (Pitobash). Soon he’s got access to the all the highest ranking guests and their escorts, albeit as a mere waiter who doesn’t even know which stemware to use for red wine. But we sense he won’t be handling bottles and glasses for long; he’ll be smashing them over heads soon enough.
There’s a lot to unpack in the film’s setting, a fictional city called Yatana that Google tells me translates from the Hindi into any number of dark English words — torture, distress, purgatory, torment, you name it. There’s a corrupt police chief (Sikandar Kher) who catches Kid’s notice, and a holy man named Baba Shakti (Makrand Deshpande) who has political/nationalistic/religious aspirations that call to mind the current prime minister of India.
And there’s violence aplenty, which is another reason the John Wick reference has proven so sticky. Kid uses his feet, his fists, whatever weapons are at hand and, in a pinch, his teeth. The film’s soundtrack backs him up with an eclectic score that includes traditional-sounding Indian tunes but also American-style rap music and, weirdly, covers of The Police’s “Roxanne” and Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love.”
That violence may deter the squeamish (you’ve been warned, squeamish!) even as it draws those who thrill to a well executed knife thrust, axe swing or even just a well executed execution.
Sometimes the combination of blood spray and camera sway makes it hard to know exactly what’s going on, even as you know exactly what’s going on. And there’s a welcome respite in the second act, in which the pace slows a little as Kid is nursed back to health by an unusual collective who will later prove to be useful teachers and allies.
I was glad, both for the breathing room and the help if afforded Monkey Man’s anti-hero. After all, even John Wick needed a helping hand from time to time.
Monkey Man. Directed by Dev Patel. Starring Dev Patel, Pitobash, and Sikander Kher. In theatres April 5.