“The Monkey Man” is packed with disjointed ideas, but still enjoyable

Before it’s a movie, “The Monkey Man” is an outright miracle. The directorial debut of Dev Patel (forever the mystery boy from Mumbai), who co-wrote the screenplay with John Cooley, encountered every possible obstacle that tried to prevent it from coming to fruition. Just before filming began, the Corona epidemic broke out, causing Patel’s investors to close the cash taps. The closing of the borders also prevented the production team from ordering professional equipment, cameras and accessories. With Jamal’s resourcefulness, that puzzle boy Patel improvised, pasting, cutting, breaking, splicing, and filming entire scenes with Go-Pro cameras, cell phones, and ropes instead of cranes.

The final product, whose rights were originally bought by Netflix, went to MONKEY PAW, Jordan Peele’s production company, who decided that this film had to hit theaters. Plague, closures and several rounds of vaccinations later, “The Monkey Man” miraculously arrives in theaters and the first reviews are already praising and crowning him as the Indian John Wick.

Like John Wick, the Monkey Man also embarks on his own revenge journey – minus a dog and an unimaginable amount of guns. The monkey man in question, played by Patel, is an unnamed street cat. He spends his nights fighting addict battles in the slums of India. When he was a child, his mother was murdered by the corrupt police chief, under the influence of an even more corrupt spiritual leader. He plans revenge on those responsible and that means a lot of bloody battles and a lot of pan.

In his first feature film as a director and screenwriter, Patel plays her and gives it a head, literally. It’s basically “John Wick”, but certainly not on steroids. And although these materials are absent from the event, “The Monkey Man” works in a good and tense way, which may not be packed with action like its older brother from the West, but is much deeper than it, with a somewhat generic story but one that gives character to the main protagonist, and does not send him to blow heads just because he was killed you are a dog. There is no great writing or deep layers here – what is here are very good directing and cinematography works. Israeli photographer Sharon Meir (“Whiplash”) proves why he is one of the best on the market. It is not clear when a particular scene was shot on a camera, an iPhone or a Go-Pro camera, but the goal was achieved.

From “The Monkey Man” | Photo: Courtesy of Tulip Entertainment

“The Monkey Man” is a surprisingly good film that rewards its viewers with flights of blood and excellently choreographed orchestrated fights. The tragic story of the hero puts soul into this thing. On the less good side, Patel sins a bit and makes a mess here of a number of deaths and ideas that don’t stick well to each other. It turns the movie into a salad that you season too much, at least in the last part. As he walks his way dripping with blood and other disgusting things, the monkey man meets a group of transgenders, who are actually a violent militia that mobilizes to his side; In another section, Patel talks about the relationship between capital and government and religious fanaticism and in another section he talks about corruption and police violence, spiced up with a pinch of the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India. It’s a pile of ideas that could work well individually but together they create a load on the system and feel forced. The other characters around the monkey man don’t get any special meaning either. They are characterized in a rather flat way and do not receive more than one line in the text, including the villains of the film. On the other hand, there is an excellent soundtrack here with songs from the eighties and seventies and Indian tracks that will make your butt jump.

How fun it is that there are movies like “The Monkey Man”, which you go into without any expectations or don’t spend a minute watching their trailer and come out pleasantly surprised. Despite the difficulties that piled up at the beginning, the closures and blockades, Patel’s stubbornness and his pleas with the investors, paid off completely. In its best moments and full of action – it’s an amusement park of a movie. Maybe not amazing but voila, does the job it needs to do, plus building a stable foundation of a story and plot that are a bit thin but ones that hold it great.

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