Monkey Man

2hrs 1min (18)

Audacious thriller directed by and starring Dev Patel ★★★★

“All hail Dev Patel,” said Kevin Maher in The Times. The 33-year-old Slumdog Millionaire star has made his directorial debut “with an audacious action flick” set in contemporary India. In the fictional city of Yatana, “mobsters rule” and “venal politicians thrive”, but there is hope to be found in the “murderously effective hands” of a mysterious bare-knuckle boxer, known as Kid, who fights wearing a monkey mask. Kid, played by Patel, is nursing a “primal hatred for the corrupt city cop” who murdered his mother. Luckily for him, he gets a chance for revenge during a deeply “satisfying” hotel bathroom brawl, which segues into “an epic street chase, followed by a brutal brothel fight, followed by a near-death rooftop shooting” – all unfolding “at a hyperkinetic pace”. If a film can be described as “close to narrative cardiac arrest”, this is it. “Scrape away the fake blood”, however, and there are ideas here too. “Modi’s India? Nationalistic rabble-rousing? The mobilisation of sectarian hatred? It’s all on the table. Come, in short, for the roundhouse kicks. Stay for the politics.”

Patel “brings the gonzo chaos” to this wildly OTT thriller, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. And he shows us “some pretty serious martial arts chops” too, thumping and kickboxing the living daylights out of the bad guys – while “periodically pausing, of course, attractively dropletted with sweat, to let us get an eyeful of those sculpted abs”. This “down-and-dirty” film “crams in a great deal”, with somewhat “messy” results, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. It’s also pretty obvious where it’s going to end up. Still, Patel is “an appealing screen presence and you’re rooting for him – both as a character and as a filmmaker – right from the start”.