SXSW 2024 Film Review: Monkey Man
DEV PATEL’S FEROCIOUS FILMMAKING DEBUT
My 2024 SXSW coverage begins here with one of the most anticipated films of the festival. As first-time action director and action star, Dev Patel has rocket fuel in his veins. Colliding formal, kinetic grit with adrenaline-fueled passion, Monkey Man is an action movie that delivers in spite of its dim spirituality and flat politics: a whirlwind of bloodletting, throat punches, and kicks to the teeth. Minor spoilers ahead…
Introducing Monkey Man at this year’s SXSW, Dev Patel gushed about the influences for his debut as both action filmmaker and action star. Rattling off his favorite genre inspirations - Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung, The Raid, Oldboy, John Wick - Patel’s love for bone-crunching fisticuffs was palpable through his jittery nerves, nerves that had been shredded by a torturous production marred with delays and shutdowns before a windfall rescue by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. Thankfully, his gumption and perseverance were well-placed because Monkey Man is one ferocious inaugural beat ‘em up: a brutally confident debut that cements the actor-turned-director’s action bonafides and then some.
Centered around a slum-bound nobody (Patel) seeking satisfaction upon those who burned down his village and killed his mother years ago, Monkey Man tumbles through a melange of gritty revenge tropes that somehow coalesce into action cinema nirvana. Known as the Kid, Patel’s lanky avenger has his story doled out in fragmented flashbacks as he bides his time throwing fights in the Mumbai underground, worming his way into a position where he can take revenge against those responsible for his trauma: corrupt cop Rana (Sikandar Kher) and his faith-wielding overlord, Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande). Monkey Man - like its sinewy and rage-fueled protagonist - bides its time, but once the pieces snap into place, it’s a whirlwind of bloodletting, throat punches, and kicks to the teeth.
“… Monkey Man is one ferocious inaugural beat ‘em up: a brutally confident debut that cements the actor-turned-director’s action bonafides and then some.”
Through its dutifully engineered brutality, Monkey Man’s strongest conviction is also its loudest: that fascist authority can sometimes only be met with violence, and that retribution is not only ameliorative, but restorative. Told as a love letter to East and South Asian martial arts cinema, Patel’s saga of revenge infuses passionate homage with Indian folklore; its titular simian is Hanuman, the Hindu god of wisdom, and also the rubbery visage of the Kid’s vigilante persona, donned at first in fixed fights, then to kick ass and take names. Patel, fashioning his usual string-bean physique into a sinewy shiv, plows through goons with style. Chock full of creative kills, well-placed gags, and a whole slew of improvised weaponry, Monkey Man wears all of its influences on its sleeve, but Patel orchestrates it all with pluck and panache - there isn’t a single frame of bloodshed that doesn’t feel like its own thing.
Monkey Man’s exuberance, however, translates less elegantly when it comes to its quieter moments. Patel places the Kid in a fevered struggle through India’s caste system, connecting his lithe brawler with other marginalized groups as he marshals his resources to take down his corrupt enemies. The Kid shelters with a community of trans women, he connects with a downtrodden sex worker, and the film is eager to use righteous religious imagery as a cry against those who would weaponize faith, but it doesn’t all quite work: At best, Patel’s well-intentioned, stream-of consciousness commentary is a little scattered and thin, at worst, it’s misguided. Monkey Man never finds the footing to step past its half-baked polemics and dim spirituality, so it’s fortunate then, that political passions play second fiddle to its bloody kineticism; Patel is infinitely more adept at remixing his octane than his social commentary, and he’s largely successful in proving one single thing: that as an action director, he’s got rocket fuel in his veins.