‘Monkey’ Bizniz
Dev Patel pulls quadruple duty on a crunching debut. And to think Netflix and Broccoli both passed…
Monkey Man
Director: Dev Patel • Writers: Dev Patel, Paul Angunawela, John Collee
Starring: Dev Patel, Pitobash, Sikandar Kher, Makarand Deshpande, Vipin Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar, Sharlto Copley
USA / Canada • 2hrs 1min
Opens Hong Kong June 20 • III
Grade: B+
Monkey Man is totally writer-director-producer-star Dev Patel’s audition tape for James Bond, right? Come on, he’s as good (and modern) a fit as anyone. He’s in his mid-30s, the age range the Bond producers have been banging on about since Daniel Craig retired, he speaks the Queen’s English – he’s from the same London ’hood as fellow Oscar nominee (!) Benedict Cumberbatch and Roger “Third Bond” Moore FFS – he’s super-fit now and ever since he grew his hair out for Lion he’s drawn a distinct line between the cutesy manchild phase of his career, of Slumdog Millionaire and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and the grown-up one. Like, it was distracting how distinct it was. Monkey Man is also likely Patel’s best chance to ever do a sexy, cool revenge thriller because he knows damn well no corner suite “genius” is going to tap an Indian actor for one of these John Wick knock-offs – not outside of India anyway. He may as well do it his damn self, and you know what? Kudos. This is eminently superior to close cousin Boy Kills World, brainier and heaps more fun.
Patel is Kid, a young man from a rural village living in fictional, Mumbai-esque Yatana (Batam, Indonesia plays India) and fighting in bare-knuckle cage matches to make a living and hone his murder skills in order to get revenge on the connected, lusciously be-moustached corrupt cop, Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher, Sense8, Amazon’s forthcoming Citadel spin-off), who burnt his home to the ground and killed his mother. Singh is tight with a local gangster, Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar), as well as one of these garden variety megalomaniacal types, silver-haired and silver-tongued Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), a sly nationalist who’s getting rich by stoking hatred and grabbing land.
Dev don’t need the Bond gig
Monkey Man may not be entirely original, and it may suffer some of the same ills as every other so-called fresh spin on this story – Sobhita Dhulipala’s premium prostitute character Sita is mostly a houseplant, it’s a bit long, too much of the action is obscured by Ritalin-ready cinematography and editing – but there’s considerably more meat on the bones than usual. Patel and his co-writers, relative newbie Paul Angunawela and John Collee (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), have stitched pretty bold socio-political observations into the well-worn pattern, steeping it in both slick action and Indian folklore (the Ramayana figures prominently). Kid’s troubles stem from the systemic imbalances of wealth and power he grew up in, and something his mother was punished for pushing back on. After a tussle with the police he’s nursed back to health – and put on a more focused path – by Alpha (Vipin Sharma) at the temple their hijra community lives in. As one of India’s invisible transgender communities, Kid witnesses firsthand the fear and discrimination they deal with daily. There’s zero mystery as to who Baba Shakti and his extremist rhetoric is modelled after (it’s PM Narendra Modi if you missed the news). They’re just a few of the elements that make Monkey Man more than the sum of its bloody parts.
And it is indeed bloody. It’s also visually confident, occasionally funny and a really, really strong first film. Policy criticism and sensitive portrayals of trans people are wonderful and thought-provoking, but let’s face it, most of us are here to see a dude absolutely hand a bunch of other dudes their asses, and on that front Monkey Man indeed delivers. Sharone Meir’s (John Woo’s Silent Night, Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash) cinematography and production design by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang regular Pawas Sawatchaiyamet do a fantastic mock-up of India’s crowded urban rabbit warrens without fetishising them or bumbling into poverty porn, and they exploit Patel’s eye for strikingly filtered compositions in the crime thriller segments to full effect.
Monkey Man squeezes a lot from its wee US$10 million (a quarter of Walled In’s modest budget!) and Patel deftly conceals the considerable roadblocks that kept popping up during production: the content scared Netflix off a planned release (wah! The Indian government might get mad at us! Wah!), but fortunately Jordan Peele stepped in as a producer to help find distribution; and he kept losing staff and gear thanks to the ’Rona (of course) and allegedly wound up using a GoPro on a few occasions. Through it all Patel aimed a little higher than most films like this. John Wick is a professional bogeyman whose name strikes fear in his adversaries. Nobody’s meek family man Hutch is a dormant but well-trained government assassin. Patel makes us watch Kid evolve from largely ineffective bruiser to polished one-man-wrecking-crew, and it gives us a rooting interest. The steady, bright flashbacks to his happy childhood in stark contrast to the either garish or dank spaces he inhabits in Yatana give us a good idea who Kid is and what made him.
But Monkey Man works because it looks great, it has solid action, a kick-ass soundtrack (shout-out to tabla titan Zakir Hussain in a cameo), an insightful cultural perspective and a clutch of entertaining, if familiar supporting characters that add texture. You can rarely go wrong with Sharlto Copley, who plays the mercenary MC at the cage fights, Tiger. Alphonso (Pitobash, 3 Idiots, Million Dollar Arm) is the Joe Pesci, the snarky, self-interested but low-caste ally Kid recruits to help him get a gig at Queenie’s exclusive club frequented by Singh. And Queenie herself is deliciously and bitchily imperious, though sadly underwritten and underserved; give this woman her own movie. Maybe pit her against Alpha’s commune and give us another can of the awesome, mythologically-tinged, entirely cathartic whoop-ass they open. Your loss, Bond franchise. — DEK