What do you do when you’ve been a movie star for nearly two decades, stuck in the realm of sweeping dramas and whimsical biopics when all you want is to prove yourself as a capable leading action star? Dev Patel’s solution was to make his own movie and cast himself as an action hero, a nameless scrappy brawler in the slums of India whose task is to dismantle the crushing weight of the establishment. The fact that it exists at all is one of those miracles of cinema, a production shot during the pandemic that patches together all manner of footage and cobbles together every idea of how a movie can be forged under the restrictions of budget and circumstance. Nearly doomed to be another forgotten weekly Netflix release, Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions snatched it up to put it front and center on the big screen, a resounding victory for anyone who wants to see both more action in the cinema and more passionate filmmakers getting their shot at their dream project. Even better – Dev Patel delivers.
Monkey Man has a distinct energy, a ferocious and infectious energy that only comes from a filmmaker who knows this could be their one and only chance to make something like this. Patel pours so much action influence into the bubbling, boiling cauldron of claustrophobic grime painted against affluent sheen that it’s hard to pick any one thing out as a leading point of reference. It’s all for the better – what’s been lazily assessed as another John Wick clone is anything but – a gory bruiser with fiery political rage coursing through its veins, the scrappy underdog persona of Sammo Hung trapped inside the body of a blood-soaked Korean revenge thriller. Yet even that seems reductive, because every time you finally feel like you’ve locked on to any one action influence it quickly morphs into something else entirely.
At times, this feels like the film’s greatest strength. After all, the only way to feel confident in the next generation of action filmmakers is to feel as though they’ve created something entirely new and aren’t merely making cheap imitations of classic Hong Kong brutality or trying to recreate the singular ephemeral presence of Bruce Lee. It’s also where the film stumbles, because in trying to do so much within its two hour runtime it can feel just as much of an overstuffed odyssey of ideation, where the strength of one moment is often lost between the weaker moments surrounding it. Truly committed action sequences are few and far between, though Patel knows how to slowly crank the tension in anticipation of each and every explosion of blood and violence. Even through the cracks of a messy production the resulting improvisation and passion make for some truly visceral brawls, tearing down setpieces and setting them ablaze just like the best of them.
Really, that’s the heart of Monkey Man. It is a film whose visible cracks and surface imperfections strengthen its resolve and make it all the more tangibly exciting and refreshing. As Patel’s anonymous street urchin rises from bloodied sideshow to vengeful assassin, slowly infiltrating India’s elite as they conspire to rule the country as an oppressive police state through religious fearmongering, it’s hard not to revel in how energizingly bold it all is. Bodies sliced by razor sharp blades, bones shattered by steel, flesh ripped by vicious spikes and barbed wire bats, every movement a crunching and visceral hit that puts the sloppy CG noodles of Doug Liman’s Road House to shame. Jed Kurzel’s thumping score combined with a soundtrack of pulse-pounding club mixes give everything propulsive energy. Though the frantic energy of Whiplash (2014) cinematographer Sharone Meir’s camera often muddies the motion of the choreography, the vibrant neon and dusty brick make for a stunning visual experience.
Monkey Man is worth showing up for. Dev Patel has turned himself into the action star he always wanted to be and it is worth showing up for because this is the kind of cinema that deserves to be seen on a big screen, where every drop of spilled blood feels like the realized grit of a team of filmmakers taking their best shot at a singular opportunity. Monkey Man is the future of action cinema because the future should be paved by people like this, people with such abundant love for the genre that the radiant fervor for a thousand films from a dozen countries and a collection of movements makes for something completely and dazzlingly unique. Imperfect as it may be – this is what cinema is for.