Monkey Man, or, Dev Patel’s Baadasssss song
“Oh, Dev’s got the juice,” is what I kept saying to myself through the first half of the movie, what I communicated to my friends after watching the film about the action directing chops of director, star, and co-writer Dev Patel. Monkey Man is a movie you feel as you’re watching. You brim with hope for the hero and anticipation for the downfall of his enemies. This, to me, is what art is for. Does it make you feel? Does it make you think? Either is good, both are better. Does it entice you to laugh like a psychopath at the absurd, brutal, or ornate set-up and pay off-of a vicious, righteous kill? The best action movies do, Monkey Man does.
This multilingual revenge film is Dev Patel’s directorial debut, hard-hitting action set against the backdrop of criticizing Hindu Nationalism as a violent exclusionary concept and a mode of using religious identity to cover economic and environmental exploitation. Our protagonist, “Kid,” or “Monkey Man,” adopts the name “Bobby” from the bleach cleaner he uses in his kitchen job, on a revenge mission to kill police chief Rana Singh (Sikander Kher), a fascist stooge that assisted a religious leader, Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), and his chosen politician clear people from land. The film begins with a young Bobby (Jatin Malik) in his forest home listening to his mother tell the story of Hanuman, a Hindu ape deity and hero, a story – and the circumstances of his hearing it – which he recalls throughout the film.
We next see him as an amateur bareknuckle brawler who performs in a monkey mask, usually not better than second-best. The fight promotion is governed by a white South African named Tiger (Sharlto Copley) who maintains a huge gambling racket and in a manner seems to exemplify transnational colonial legacies. He addresses the crowd and says that whatever god they pray to they all (he included) worship money. Kid sleeps on a crowded floor with dozens of other men in a house in the slums, using his connections to get information about a woman that manages an establishment Rana frequents (Ashwini Kalsekar as Queenie), arranges to have her purse stolen and then transported across town, kilometers away from her. The camera work and editing in this sequence is especially dynamic, following motorcycles and scooters through crowded streets, children running over and under objects and through buildings, and so on. Much like the camera’s close eye on the bareknuckle kickboxing-and-grappling, the cheering crowds, and the juxtaposition between the slums and the urban centers of concentrated wealth they butt up against, this sequence paints a picture of deprivation, desperation, and ingenuity. Kid returns Queenie’s purse to her at her establishment in exchange for work in the classy brothel’s kitchen.
Being a good worker, Kid moves from the kitchen to doing bottle service, becoming friendly with Alphonso (Pitobash), meeting sex worker Neela (Adithi Kalkunte, who maybe has too few lines), and becoming accustomed to madame Queenie’s calculated capitalistic cruelty. Patel, cinematographer Sharone Meir, and the editing team use montage to show the character’s immersion into the world he is infiltrating, as well as training a dog he meets in the back alley to carry his black market-purchased revolver through a hole in the fence so Kid can avoid metal detectors. He spikes Rana’s coke in the top floor night club and confronts him in the bathroom. You think, wow, the showdown comes so early, and then things spiral further. A savage bathroom fight worthy of a Mission: Impossible film followed by a police chase on rooftops, through streets, and Kid incidentally fighting a machete-wielding pimp in a brothel, amid several more brutal run-ins with police along the same sequence. He’s shot off the rooftop, falls into the grossest water, and is nursed back to health at a hijra temple, where a community of third gender people is led by Alpha (Vipin Sharma).
In this first half of the film, at bars we see on TV the guru Baba Shakti speak in interviews of his humility and how he isn’t interested in politics, just helping people. Meanwhile, we hear offhandedly that there are concerns about the labor conditions of the factories where his branded health drinks are made, and we see directly that he ordered Rana to destroy Kid’s village. We also see news footage violence in the street done by members of the right-wing Hindu nationalist movement, attacking Muslims (and possibly Christians) and transgender people. These ideas are never developed in the way they might be in a political thriller or political-legal drama. The film is not, for instance, heavily or specifically interested in the recruitment and development strategies of the paramilitaries. (Though, I will say, I am generally in favor of focusing most of your ire on institutions like the police and holy men using religion as cover for their self-enrichment if you want a shorthand for expressing these issues.)
Nonetheless, what briefly seem like asides play minor roles in informing characters (Alphonso jokes that the kitchen manager doesn’t like him because of the “Muslim-Christian” thing, as opposed to him trying to take guys off the line to buy or sell drugs) or end up as set ups for major payoffs – hearing about and seeing transgender people being attacked by fascist mobs on the television leads to meeting the hijra who nurse Kid back to health; this in turn leads to Kid/Bobby/Monkey Man training with them, which makes him a more effective fighter; he uses their money to bet on himself through a proxy and returns their money many times over with a note reminding them of their own warrior heritage, so when he’s outnumbered in the final stages of his showdown with corrupt police and criminal goons, the hijra arrive as his allies. It’s smoothly and elegantly, but never boringly, done. At the hijra temple, renowned Indian musician Zakir Hussain plays the community table maestro who tells stories with his music, and helps Kid cultivate his striking combinations. It’s so cool. We get insights into individuals and social structures, and it is moreover artistically engaging. It is a combination of classic martial arts/action movie components alongside traumatic flashbacks, psychedelic visions that got me back on board when I worried we were losing momentum, and heartfelt conversations about humanity and spirituality. All thisall looks and sounds gorgeous.
The blood-splattering brutality is intense when it’s on, but also stops short of feeling extraneous. There’s nothing wrong with exploitation cinema or gratuitous gore from time to time (or all the time if that’s your bag), but here it mostly feels like sensationalized realism. I saw it opening weekend, but this review is late enough now that I can tell you it prominently features its protagonist training with transgender women to beat up corrupt cops. I’d have thought very highly of the film regardless, but that’s the sort of thing you post online as a “what more do you need?” recommendation. What you need is an exceptional execution of such a tantalizing promise, and Monkey Man delivers. Monkey Man is among the most entertaining films I’ve seen this year, a martial arts film which maintains a sometimes-grim seriousness while also effectively deploying humor.
Monkey Man is similar to Extraction in eyeing political corruption in South Asia, but feels more insightful and less exoticizing. The different circumstances of the protagonist (an Indian man moving through stratified space rather than an Australian mercenary dropping in for a rescue mission that goes wrong) changes the perspective of the camera and the audience. The wealth concentration and disparity it showcases reminds me of where I live and what I’ve seen in other American cities, the stark reality of segregated wealth, the blatant confrontation with the uneven distribution of the benefits and costs of capitalism. It made me think of the ways the present world political-economic system distributes risk and gain but also how the increased concentration we associate with the developing world is where we’re headed if political will doesn’t arise in this country to shift the direction of our politics. Maybe it is inevitable…
Monkey Man also made me think, as I often do, about how religion and seeking a connection with nature, with your fellow humans, and with a concept of the divine, can manifest in negative and positive ways in the world. Prevalent though it is, the anti-Muslim discrimination of the Amero-European West is not the only stripe of that sort of religious chauvinism. As long as organized religion has existed, it has had political ramifications and some forms of majoritarian tendencies. As cruel as that is, there is something beautiful about the fact that there has likely as long been resistance, violent and otherwise, as the excluded people whom the majority (or the ruling minority within it) try to paint out of the picture instead demand recognition and respect.
There might be many lessons to learn from how Monkey Man deals with politics – in religion, in physical space and wealth, in institutional corruption and intersections between vice, police, military, religion, and legislation. There might be a version of the film that deals with these problems in a more meticulous way. But this version is more than acceptable. The prime minister (whose name is “Joshi” but who does not appear in the IMDb or Wikipedia cast lists) is spared at the final fight, perhaps a nod to avoid censorship in India (the flags in rally scenes had their colors changed from the orange affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh paramilitary to a crimson closer to what’s used by the communist parties in India). Monkey Man wants the guru after he’s dealt with the police chief, maybe an artistic veneer to commentate on a problem without being accused of encouraging violence against a head of state. I don’t know. I just know this movie is a tremendously fun time, a real badass flick that also made me think.
Final Score: 4/5
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