Monkey Man – Review
Who would have guessed that Dev Patel, sweet, lovable Dev Patel, would transform into an action star? Not me.
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then use the links to listen or watch as he and Ryan discuss the film further. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
121 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Paul Angunawela, John Collee, and Dev Patel
Directed by Dev Patel
Synopsis:
An anonymous young man unleashes a campaign of vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to systemically victimize the poor and powerless.
…turns out, we were all wrong about Dev Patel.
Monkey Man is a great little revenge flick, which on the surface might simply be dismissed as a sort of Indian John Wick derivation, so much inspiration from those films does it draw.
But that’s too easy, and is quite simply too reductive, to do to Monkey Man.
Grounded firmly in Indian culture, tradition, and mythology, Monkey Man elevates itself above a simple revenge tale to one of caste resistance, political intrigue, and religious corruption.
Through it all, though, our anonymous hero (“Monkey Man” or “Bobby” at various times) doesn’t think beyond his own needs, his own desires, until he realized that by achieving his own ends, he can make things better for many more people.
As in so much myth, the targets of his wrath created the instrument of their own destruction years earlier, in an almost Greek tragedy sort of tradition.
But, to return to the John Wick comparison, our hero is playing the long game in order to achieve his goals. Years in the making, his slow, methodical, plan for infiltration and vengeance differs mightily from Wick’s “bust in and burn it down” approach.
The action scenes draw much from Wick, though, as those films changed the way “Western” cinema looked at fight scenes, and which changed both the choreography and the cinematography of those signature fight scenes, and it is very well done here in Monkey Man.
If you’re looking for a Wickian tale of revenge with good action sequences and a bit of a foreign flavor, Monkey Man may be for you.
Monkey Man is now in theaters and stars Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Sikandar Kher, Adithi Kalkunte, Makrand Deshpande, and Ashwini Kalsekar.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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