Director: Dev Patel
Starring: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Sikandar Kher, Adithi Kalkunte, Sobhita Dhulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Makarand Deshpande, Jatin Malik, Zakir Hussain
Certificate: 18
Run Time: 121 mins

Monkey Man is actor Dev Patel’s directorial debut, a neo-noir action thriller descibred by some as “John Wick in Mumbai”. In the film, Patel plays Kid, who after losing his mother when he was very young earns a living as a monkey-masked fighter at an underground boxing club, where he is incentivised to lose. When he notices the perpetrators of his childhood, he gets recruited into a luxury brothel that they frequent to enact his revenge. 

Patel certainly had a memorable experience in getting the film to the big screen – the film was almost cancelled when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Patel broke his hand when filming an action sequence and Thunder Road Films, the original production company sold the rights to Netflix. It was only when Jordan Peele saw the film that he persuaded Universal Pictures to acquire the film from Netflix because he wanted it to be seen on the big screen.  

 Monkey Man is a mixed bag – some of the film is quite promising and there’s some visceral action sequences that suggest Patel has a future behind the screen. But it’s also equally sluggish, especially the second act where Kid goes through the typical revenge film motions of bulking up before he has a second crack at his enemies. Patel also tries to interweave too many elements into what is a rather simplistic plot, such as themes of discrimination, the caste system and poverty but nothing really sticks. 

 Patel puts in a typically committed performance as Kid and I really brought that his character had gone through a tough upbringing after the loss of his childhood. Of the rest of the cast, Pitobash is a highlight as Alphonso, a gangster working for the enemy who Kid befriends to work his way up the ranks. Sharlto Copley is underused as Tiger, who organises the fights and feels like he’s come in from a different film. On a side note, Patel apparently asked Neill Blomkamp to originally direct the film (the three had collaborated on Chappie) andCopley’s performance feels like it’s lifted from a Blomkamp film. 

 Although DP Sharone Meir resorts to quick cuts in the action sequences, some of them are well-shot and show promise for Patel as a director, the best being a supercharged tuk-tuk on the city streets. You can certainly tell the crew are working on a limited budget as the film will often cut away or obscure any effects that you’d expect to see as a consequence to an action. The usually reliable Jed Kurzel turns in a strange score too – some of it’s great, especially an atypically acoustic track to a gritty fight sequence but there isn’t a memorable theme that holds the film together. 

Although Monkey Man shows promise and is sporadically entertaining, the odd pacing and overly simplistic story derail the film from reaching the heights of better revenge action thrillers such as John Wick. Even The Beekeeper, an over-the-top revenge film starring Jason Statham that released at the start of the year is better-paced than Monkey Man. I’d be interested in seeing what else Patel has up his sleeve as a director because there is certainly potential but I think he’s taken on too ambitious a project for his debut.