Directed by: Dev Patel
Starring: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Sikander Kher, Sobhita Dulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Pitobsh Tripathi
Monkey Man, the directorial debut of acclaimed actor Dev Patel, is John Wick using fists of fury instead of guns. It's a revenge picture in which a poor man named Kid (Patel) infiltrates the upper echelon of the New Delhi underworld to avenge his mother's death at the hands of corrupt police and politicians. At the end of all of the fisticuffs, you wonder how Kid's hands aren't swollen or broken along with other body parts.
I also wonder why movies are filming so many scenes in poorly lit areas or in the dark. Trying to follow the fight sequences are a fool's errand as daylight emerges as a welcome relief. The fights are no less action-packed than any other movie's, but eventually they come off as overchoreographed and simply absurd. Patel, a superior actor who also wrote the movie, alludes to Bruce Lee and other action heroes of his childhood when staging the action. However, these allusions aren't as fun as the real thing.
The movie follows a familiar superhero pattern of the hero getting thrashed, retreating to a remote place to heal and reload, a training montage, and then he returns to finish the job. The villains aren't given much depth for us to want to see their destruction. Kid himself is more of a symbol than a hero. We are expected to care through osmosis, but that doesn't happen either. Monkey Man is a passion project of Patel's which took years to finally come to the big screen. For that, we applaud him, but the finished product is hardly distinguishable from countless other revenge movies.
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