'Monkey Man' is bad, actually

Dev Patel’s directorial debut, despite lots of hype, is far from great action filmmaking

Monkey Man really looked good on paper.

 It’s the directorial debut of actor Dev Patel, who also stars in it; Patel has been good in several different kinds of movies over the years. The film has drawn comparisons to the John Wick series, and it’s well-known that Jordan Peele — who’s got a pretty good eye — spearheaded the film’s acquisition by Universal from Netflix, ensuring a theatrical release. It’s set in India, the home of action films like RRR and Tiger 3 that have broken through stateside of late, and the advance word has been positive. 

But I finally saw Monkey Man last week and considered it one of the year’s most disappointing films. Its plot is unfocused, but that’s nothing compared to the butt-ugly, incoherent Madame Web-caliber cinematography. 

The John Wick comparisons have been made about Monkey Man ever since I first heard about it, and at one point, John Wick is even mentioned. But Monkey Man misunderstands a significant part of why those movies are great. 

The blocking of action is extremely important in the John Wick films and the various other movies influenced and inspired by them. It’s presented in ever-more creative and exciting ways, to the point where the fourth Wick film was the best of the series. 

Monkey Man doesn’t do this. The action is shot incoherently, with the camera spinning all over the place and plenty of hand-to-hand fights where the camera is overly focused on the characters’ feet for long stretches. On top of that, while going for “gritty,” the word that comes to mind with Monkey Man is “cruddy.” And Monkey Man is undercooked regarding another defining thing about John Wick- worldbuilding. 

There are a couple of memorable moments, especially one scene in an elevator in which Patel employs a knife in an exceptionally creative way. But that’s one of the only times the film stops to breathe. 

It’s a shame because Monkey Man has some good ideas. Patel plays “Kid,” who lives in Mumbai and is introduced while fighting in underground fighting competitions while wearing a monkey mask. It’s not clear precisely what the fighting format is, but it looks more like pro wrestling than MMA or anything like that. 

We gradually learn more about his backstory, including a tragedy from the past that motivates him.

 Kid, under the name Bobby, has infiltrated a crime ring that provides drugs and sex to the Mumbai high society. In this story, the criminal elite and political elite are practically one and the same. 

The film is set against the backdrop of an upcoming election in which a nationalist party that bears more than a passing resemblance to India’s ruling BJP party. 

And it’s this, it’s been speculated, which may have had something to do with Netflix deciding to dump the film. But while it’s been pointed out that the film appears to have switched out a flag color scheme so as not to look like BJP’s, the villains still largely resemble the country’s actual governing party, and it’s hard to read the film any way besides an indictment of nationalism. 

The film, however, doesn’t quite succeed in bringing together its main strands of the quest for revenge, the underground fighting, and the political stuff. 

There are also some howlers. One scene, set in a brothel, is scored by what sounds like diegetic music of a club remix of “Roxanne” by The Police, which raises questions about what kind of brothel would play a song about a man trying to convince a woman to stop engaging in sex work.

I don’t doubt that Dev Patel has potential as a filmmaker, but Monkey Man is a dud of a debut.