Monkey Man review – Dev Patel’s directorial debut is a gory descent into darkness

The tale of Monkey Man is a beleaguered one – for the titular character, played by the actor turned writer-director Dev Patel, a slog of oppression, trauma and rage curdled into revenge in the seedy fight clubs of an Indian slum. For the film, Patel’s directorial debut, it took years of laboring to get his passion project to screen. Production was underway in Batam, Indonesia, before Covid, and then “everything that could go wrong, did”, as Patel said at its SXSW premiere on Monday night – delays, movie purgatory, a distribution deal with Netflix that did not realize the dream of having his ambitious action flick debut in theaters.

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And then came Jordan Peele, who felt the movie deserved the big-screen treatment and rescued it from the straight-to-streaming slush pile for a theatrical release through his production company’s deal with Universal. The pop-horror auteur was on hand for the premiere to hype up Patel’s directorial chops, and it’s clear what so excited him about the project: Patel, a self-professed action film devotee, has a gift for highly kinetic, brutally violent fight sequences, and is operating on a canvas – bustling slum in a large fictional Indian city, revenge arc inspired by a centuries-old Hindu legend, trauma derived from real state-sanctioned violence – deserving of a big screen.

Although excitement is maybe not the word I would use to describe the experience of watching Monkey Man; the film’s nearly two hours are almost relentlessly grim, even in its hero’s victorious moments. Patel’s Kid is largely wordless, either tortured by flashbacks to his mother’s (Adithi Kalkunte) horrific murder in a village raid or steeled against a near-army of people ready to ruthlessly cut him down. This is a brooding, bruising revenge film whose arc is more one of capability than redemption. For Kid begins the film an underdog, battered by state corruption and the fighters of an underground ring run by the skeevy white dude Tiger (Sharlto Copley) in the fictional Indian city of Yatana, where Kid dons a gorilla mask and gets beaten to a pulp for cash. (Patel can be a very literal film-maker – the ring, dim and teeming with particles of Earth, looks like it’s actually underground.)

Inspired by the Hindu monkey deity Hanuman and a fury that consumes basically his whole character, Kid schemes to infiltrate the corrupt world of high-flyers who wronged him as well as countless other poor people in the name of power: ice-cold Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar), manager of a high-end brothel; corrupt police officer Rana (Sikandar Kher), the embodiment of evil who killed his mother; and Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), a power-hungry guru-cum-politician who masks land grabs in the language of spiritual wisdom. There are a few sidekicks – Alphonso (Pitobash), a street hustler, and Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala), an alluring escort at Queenie’s club who catches Kid’s eye and isn’t given much characterization besides having a tattoo indicating a rural upbringing.

The film’s slightly confusing middle act finds Kid recuperating amid the hijra, an ostracized community of “third-gender” – trans women, intersex, gender-nonconforming – warriors who nurture and train him into hyper-competency. (I am admittedly getting that from the press notes – there are a lot of references to Hinduism, Indian subcultures and state politics heretofore largely unseen in a Hollywood action film that will probably go over the head of many viewers, myself included. Although safe to say that the film, which appears to at one point splice action sequences with real news footage of sectarian violence in India, is condemning said violence in the name of Hindu nationalism.)

If you have the stomach for singularly focused revenge and some truly graphic, visceral hand-to-hand combat, Monkey Man delivers the goods. Patel has a nimble grip on the rhythm of the slum’s power lines and the destabilizing experience of the fighter. The communication and texture of story, as provided by a perfunctory script co-written with Paul Angunawela and John Collee, less so. Kid is not your quippy action star, a la John Wick, one of several touchstones including Korean revenge action, Bollywood, Bruce Lee and the 2011 Indonesian thriller The Raid. Patel is as magnetic and helplessly sympathetic as ever, even as he hardens into a (convincing) killer, but there’s frustratingly little to Kid besides quest, trauma and opponent.

Still, Monkey Man offers some cinematic treats – an early scene communicating the Kid’s chain of command with his people crackles, as does any scene in the streets; Patel’s attempts to simulate Kid’s perspective as he learns to fight and kill – rapid-fire edits, blurred vision, camera on a constant swivel – imbue the action with an immersive and vertiginous, if at time wearisome, momentum. His visual style is an at times discombobulating mix of TV soap, gritty character drama and slick Hollywood action.

Which makes for an at times bumpy, steamrolling ride, punctuated with some truly impressive visual flexes and a too-muchness that feels apt for a first-time film-maker – one who should get another opportunity, sooner rather than later. It isn’t and hasn’t been the smoothest ride, but as proof of concept for Patel’s action movie bona fides in front of and behind the camera, consider Monkey Man a success.

• Monkey Man is screening at the SXSW festival and will be out in cinemas on 5 April