Revenge-thriller you didn’t know you wanted
Dev Patel’s directorial debut is a massively violent martial arts revenge flick. And nope, I didn’t see that coming either. Patel got his start on the superb and conservative-media-baiting Brit soap Skins back in 2007. He became an overnight global star in 2008 at the age of 18 in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire and then built on that success with a series of well-chosen roles in mostly terrific films.
Patel was fun in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, heartbreaking in Lion and Hotel Mumbai, pretty much definitive in The Personal History of David Copperfield and spookily effective in David Lowery’s The Green Knight. I’ve watched and enjoyed all those films and many more, but none of them prepared me for Monkey Man.
Monkey Man is set in India, more or less in the present day. Patel is an unnamed man – we get to know him as ‘‘Kid’’ and, maybe, ‘‘Bobby’’ – grinding out a living as fall-guy in a brutal underground fight club.
Kid earns a cut of the bookies’ take and parlays his cash into information on a mysterious woman known as Queenie, who runs the city’s most exclusive ‘‘Gentleman’s club’’. Kid secures a job at the club and slowly – but not too slowly – the bones of his plan come into view.
Years before, the squatter town he was born in was razed by a corrupt politician and his police chief lackey. Kid’s mother died in the fire – and Kid is coming for revenge.
My three favourite 21st century guybeats-up-everyone-to-get-to-the-top-boss actioners are still Old Boy (2003), The Raid (2011) and John Wick (2014), with special mentions for Dredd in 2012 and a few others, depending on my mood.
To be fair, Monkey Man won’t join that holy trinity. But Patel has crafted a deliriously entertaining and pleasantly gritty couple of hours with a decent side-order of social and political commentary that I’ve no doubt will raise ire and eyebrows in India and beyond.
Patel and his cast – including Sharlto Copley (District 9) and Indian superstars Vipin Sharma, Pitobash, Sikandar Kher and Sobhita Dhulipala – are all superb, while Patel the director, abetted by cinematographer Sharone Meir (Whiplash), keeps the action coming thick and fast.
At a late-night screening with a few mates and Jed Kurzel’s soundtrack turned all the way up, Monkey Man is a blast.