Official Website

Plot Summary: An anonymous young man unleashes a campaign of vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to systemically victimize the poor and powerless.

Director: Dev Patel

Writers: Dev Patel, Paul Angunawela, John Collee

Runtime: 2 hours 1 min

Main Cast:

• Dev Patel as Kid
• Sharlto Copley as Tiger
• Pitobash as Alphonso
• Vipin Sharma as Alpha
• Sikander Cher as Rana
• Adithi Kalkunte as Neela

Review by: Samuel

What I Liked

My list of dislikes for this film will exceed my likes in number. However, what I did like was so spectacular that it saved this form being a bad movie-going experience for me. That is, the brutal action combined with the superb camera work that allowed me to see it all.

Contrary to what the trailer might have you believe. Monkey Man is not completely about action. Director and lead actor Dev Patel has messages and themes sewn throughout the film that take much of the screen time (more on that later). That means, when the action is front and center it is NOTICABLE, and thankfully it is glorious. The choreography itself is great, but this is truly one of the most violent action films I have seen in a while…I loved it. Teeth shatter and fly through the air, skulls are flattened, necks are torn (not just cut, but TORN) open and every single punch feels real. The action is enhanced by the BEST camera work I’ve seen this year. Dev Patel and his DP did their thing. There are so many different angles used to show you exactly what you need to see. Low angles during fist fights get you up close to those body shots; , shaky cam (which I normally hate) is used well during scenes of utter chaos when our main character literally has his world crumbling around him; we have a scene where we are viewing action through a keyhole.

There are honestly so many excellent shots in this film, that it could be used in a class. Even outside of action, scenes completely filled with dialogue are captivating by the sheer amount of production values in both the background and foreground. Truly, this is a masterful piece of artwork.

What I Didn’t Like

What I did not like is a lot. Like, A LOT. But I think I can break it down into 3 categories: Pacing, Characterization, and Story.

Pacing is easiest to explain. The main character is clearly angry to begin this movie but you cannot tell if he is angry at himself and is taking beatings in a fight club  to punish himself, if he angry at he world because of classism and how it separates haves from have nots, if he is angry in general at the rich for how they treat women in his vicinity, or if he is angry at one specific person for a specific reason. Because he walks around with his fists clenched and doing anything for money it’s not clear if this is a heist, revenge, or redemption film. It’s at about 40 minutes you find out it’s revenge- that’s WAY too long. There is so much boring in between the good that this movie feels 30 minutes longer than it is.

This leads directly into the next issue- story. This movie is like John Wick, IP Man, Fast and Furious and  Origin all mixed together. That it to say it is an amalgamation of the best parts of those films, but the whole does not equal the sum of its parts. This is especially true as it relates to the idea of giving a real life message on a serious topic. There is civil unrest at the center of this film concerning the VERY real issue of the Caste system and the dangers of classism. However, all of that if jumbled in with people doing impossible stunts. So it is kind of jarring going from a scene where a man uses his teeth to stab a knife through another man…to then seeing real life documentary-style footage of people in India struggling to survive against those in power. This is a long-winded way of saying the tone is inconsistent, and it is truly to the film’s detriment.

But my biggest issue is the characterization. It almost feel like there is another movie we should have seen before this one because our main character goes through the most confounding of arcs. In the beginning, he is a capable fighter the likes of Bryan O’Connor from 2 Fast 2 Furious; by the end he is John Wick. But he doesn’t DO anything to get there- he kind of just becomes a badass. It’s actually unbelievable, and I don’t mean that as flattery. Dev Patel puts on a show in every scene he’s in, but his character is so closed off and distant that you as an audience member can’t relate and you also won’t understand how people in that world could relate.

I’m afraid I’ll get into spoilers if I go into detail, but there’s just a sense that people start to revere/fear him out of nowhere. So much so that it feels like he had to have been a big deal in the past even though this film never hinted towards that. It’s not quite as bad as a Zack Snyder film, but it is in the same vein where some leaps are taken all to get us to the next plot point.