Hanuman-to-Man

Film: Monkey Man
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

There are weird confluences in movies sometimes. Every now and then, two studios release movies that are disturbingly similar at almost the same time. Witness The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes being released in consecutive months. Other examples include Dante’s Peak/Volcano, Tombstone/Wyatt Earp, The Prestige/The Illusionist and Friends with Benefits/No Strings Attached. The same thing happened in 2024. Both Boy Kills World and Monkey Man were released in April, and the two movies have a lot of common elements.

Boy Kills World is about a character named Boy who is attacked and left for dead by a corrupt government. He grows up with the goal of killing the people responsible for the death of his sister. Monkey Man follows the story of Kid (Dev Patel), who works in fight clubs and menial jobs. Kid was attacked and left for dead by a corrupt police force, and trains with the goal of killing the man responsible for the death of his mother. The main difference between them, aside from the setting, is that Boy Kills World is in large part a comedy and Monkey Man plays it entirely straight.

The paragraph above really does essentially cover the elevator pitch for Monkey Man. Our hero, Kid (who sometimes goes by Bobby) works at an underground fight club run by Tiger (Sharlto Copley). His job, more or less, is to give a good show and get his ass kicked. To protect his identity, he fights while wearing a monkey mask, reminiscent of the god Hanuman, who appears to be the specific god of the Hindu pantheon that Kid worships.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Kid grew up in the forest. His people were attacked by a corrupt police officer named Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher). Kid’s mother (Adithi Kalkunte) is killed saving him. The underground fights are a way for Kid to survive, but he also uses them to find ways to get closer to the politically powerful Singh.

Through an elaborate ruse, Kid acquires the wallet of Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar). When he returns her wallet, he asks not for a reward, but a job, which gets him in at Kings, a brothel she runs that is frequented by Rana Singh. Here he meets Alphonso (Pitobash), and gets in his good graces by telling him about the underground fights and that Alphonso should bet against him, essentially guaranteeing him a win. This leads to more access to Singh and a failed assassination attempt, sending Kid on the run and straight into the arms of the local hijra community, a group of transgendered, intersexed, and other people living communally. He trains here under the tutelage of Alpha (Vipin Sharma) until he is ready to go back and kill the man who murdered his mother.

The third act is essentially Kid’s final quest to exact his revenge, and that’s what it is. He cuts a swath of destruction through the local elite, who happen also to be the local ruling political party. The hijra people get their licks in as well, and it is violet, bloody, and at times, glorious.

This is really all that Monkey Man is. It wouldn’t be difficult to read some ulterior motives into it. While this is a revenge picture and an action movie, it’s also very clearly a commentary on wealth, power, and the violence of the world today. It’s not much of an allegory when everything is so obviously on the surface. That the conclusion has some notes of a film like Enter the Dragon only adds to its own credibility and doesn’t detract at all from the message that is clearly here.

A lot of this film is all about the style, but don’t let that fool you; this is not specifically style over substance. Monkey Man both stars Dev Patel and is his feature-length directorial debut, and it’s a mature film in a lot of ways. There is tremendous camera work and use of color throughout. If I have a complaint here, it’s the same complaint that I always have with action films; much of that action is filmed with too many cuts and too close to the actors. Pull back and give us fights with long takes and at mid-range.

Dev Patel is the reason to see this, along with some wild action. My guess is that come award season, Monkey Man is going to get snubbed completely and Dev Patel will once again be left on the sidelines. To be fair, this isn’t the sort of movie that gets a great deal of Oscar attention. It’s an action movie first, it’s told about half in Hindi for second, and with the exception of Sharlto Copley, the entire cast is Indian. Patel should get more recognition, though, and he shouldn’t have been snubbed for The Green Knight.

Anyway, even though the message is an obvious one, this is worth your time, especially if you enjoy seeing an epic ass-kicking.

Why to watch Monkey Man: Dev Patel is better at this than he gets credit for.
Why not to watch: Abuse is always frustrating and terrible.