HOLLYWOOD—A lot of you might be thinking, where in the world did the title “Monkey Man” come from? Trust me after watching the high-octane action flick it will all make perfect sense. The movie is the directorial debut for actor Dev Patel and while NOT critically amazing, it is damn entertaining as a spectator. Think of “Monkey Man” as a clash between “Fight Club” and “John Wick” on steroids.
The movie is a revenge tale, that is the best way to sum it up. You have the journey of Kid (Patel), who is out to find and kill all the people involved in the murder of his mother Neela (Adithi Kalkunte) when he was a kid at the hands of Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher), a corrupt police chief who brutalizes Neela as Kid watches from a distance.
“Monkey Man” is not for the faint of heart people. The blood is relentless and the violence is in your face and does NOT apologize, and I love the movie for that. Kid earns a living participating in fights in an underground world where he gets beat to a pulp, while wearing, you guessed it a ‘Monkey Mask.’ Patel is really great in the role and we get these chaotic flashbacks that gives the audience a slight glimmer of Kid’s upbringing and the bond he shared with his mother.
The audience is also introduced to a horde of characters that will ultimately be targets that Kid battles through in his quest for vengeance, but we don’t get much story on those individuals. I mean we have drug lords, prostitutes, political figures, spiritual leaders and corruption. At times “Monkey Man” felt like a tale on morals, integrity and in that mix was an element of a vigilante doing his best to fix the corrupt system.
The only difference is he was not a superhero with powers like Batman; he was an ordinary man who developed a skill set to fight and uses those skills after being pointed in the right direction to his advantage. I did want to know a bit more about the Baba (Makarand Deshpande), who has all this control over people and gets them to do his bidding while keeping his hands clean in the process. As a villain, he didn’t give me that “Oh, I should be scared of you feeling” that you want in a movie.
“Monkey Man” has all these other plotlines lingering throughout the main narrative, where you get small slices, but not as much as I prefer, but I suspect that is what Patel was going for. He wanted the audience to be in this adrenaline-fueled fight fest from start to finish, and the choreographed fights are stellar. I loved watching them and I was glued to seeing the hand-to-hand combat. You have gun fights, car chases, explosions, stabbings and just a ton of action that you expect in a movie like this.
As for character development, it is virtually flat. The audience is purely going to care about Kid and only Kid; of course we want more backstory about his mother Neela and some of the other villains in the flick, but maybe a prequel might explain those loopholes.
“Monkey Man” is simply a movie that is aimed to entertain you for two hours and it does just that. Simple, mindless fun, you’re not supposed to be thinking, just enjoy the ride.
