Monkey Man - Movie Review
Monkey Man is the directorial debut of Dev Patel, and despite my wishes, this is not the cinematic portrayal of the legendary hero from Hey Arnold. Here, an anonymous young man unleashes a campaign of vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continues to systematically victimize the poor and powerless. So, you’ve probably heard by now the various issues that plagued Patel while he tried to make this film. He broke his hand, he broke some toes, he got some infections. It was very difficult for him to get this movie made, and when you watch the movie, it really does look like he’s getting his ass kicked consistently. They’ve done a fantastic job of making this movie look as gritty, dirty, and in-your-face as possible.
But what happened after they filmed the movie is also very interesting because Netflix bought the rights to the movie. Then Jordan Peele saw it and said, no, this has to be on theatre screens, and acquired the rights from Netflix through Monkey Paw, with which he has a deal with Universal. Now we can all go see Monkey Man in a movie theater, and we’re all the better for it because this movie is badass. We’re getting into the good stuff now. Both major releases out this weekend, between The First Omen and this, are really good and also have strangely very similar posts. There is so much personality to Patel’s film, not just in the culture that’s on display, the history, and the backstories of these characters, but in the camera work. It’s kind of like the best of both worlds, between shaky cam and the smooth-flowing camera work that we’ve come to expect from some of the modern John Wick films. Shaky cam is not the right word, but it’s very brutal. You’re close to the action constantly, the sound effects are bone-crunching, and you really do feel like these people are getting their asses kicked constantly. At its core, Monkey Man is a dog story.
You have someone who lost their mother when they were a kid, experienced a lot of hardship ever since, earns money by fighting in the ring and losing intentionally, but who finds himself in positions where he can slowly climb the ranks of this criminal underworld that he knows are responsible for the death of his mother. And that way, I think just about any viewer can get behind this character. And its why Dev Patel excels, not just behind the camera, but in front of it. He is marvelous here. He has been terrific in so many movies, but never so magnetic as in this film. The physicality of the fight scenes and how much he put into those is evident, but it’s the dramatic scenes where he’s faced with his past and how that conflicts with what he’s become now and what he has to do to solve the issues of his past. You see that emotion and tension constantly behind his eyes. If you’ve seen a Bruce Lee movie, if you’ve seen Cowboy Bebop, if you’ve seen John Wick, you’ve seen elements of Monkey Man before and all of those films or TV shows. In the case of Cowboy Bebop, the hero faces mortal injuries and has to be resuscitated or brought back to life by a group of people who rescue him and sort of help him along the way. The structure of Monkey Man is very familiar.
It’s a revenge film about an underdog who’s facing a gigantic opponent. We’ve seen movies like this many times. What’s unique about it is Dev Patel’s vision and the culture that he infuses into every single scene, and he establishes a seedy underbelly to India that felt completely impenetrable. I really loved how the stakes and the opposition against him really did feel insurmountable. And I’m glad I got to see this movie on a gigantic screen because it just would not have been the same if I had watched it on Netflix. As much as I enjoyed the extraction movies with Chris Hemsworth, also on Netflix, I always thought while watching them, this would look really good in a movie theater. Why am I not getting that experience? And I enjoy streaming as much as the next person. I watch movies on streaming all the time, but I just wouldn’t have gotten the bone-mashing, bloody, pulpy experience that I just had in the movie theater if I had seen this at home. This is one of those movies where as you watch it, you really do begin to feel that it was very difficult to make. You see big-budget movies all the time.
Not that Monkey Man is, but you see these movies with massive effects and huge-scale sequences, and you understand like, OK, I see kind of how they did that. Dev Patel really pulled off a miracle here. This movie is filled with incredible sequences, very realistic bloody effects and fights, crowd scenes, car chases, shootouts. And I looked at the budget and it’s supposedly like $10 million. I don’t know how that $10 million translates to filming outside of America, but they did things in this movie that I have no idea how they pulled it off. It’s really a remarkable feat and I think you guys should check this out, especially if you’re a fan of very violent action movies.
