‘Monkey Man’ Is Dev Patel’s Emotional Hyper Violent Directing Debut

‘Monkey Man’ Is Dev Patel’s Emotional Hyper Violent Directing Debut

By Alex McPherson

Bone-crunchingly violent and layered with social commentary, director Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” is an action thriller that packs a real punch, in more ways than one.

Our unnamed protagonist (Patel), called the Kid in the credits, lives in the perpetually dark slums of Yatana (a fictional city modeled off Mumbai), where skyscrapers overshadow the have-nots below, and religion is used by those in authority as a tool to retain power above all else.

The Kid makes ends meet working as a fighter in an underground club run by the sadistic Tiger (a typically unhinged, scenery-chewing Sharlto Copley). Performing under the guise of a character named Monkey Man, the Kid gets paid when he loses matches and only receives his full fee if Tiger sees him bleed in the ring. 

It’s a bleak existence; a reflection of the Kid’s tortured soul molded with trauma, quietly biding his time to get enough money for a gun and find the moment to strike back. Kid’s fury stems from a tragic childhood, wherein the corrupt police chief Rana (Sikandar Ker, perfectly detestable) murdered his mother, Neela (Adithi Kalkunte), while Rana and his cronies, under guidance from a blatantly evil spiritual guru Baba Shakti (Makarande Deshpande), burned his forest-dwelling community to the ground to take their land. Kid’s hands are scorched and rugged: a reflection of his past and the vengeance he’s compelled to deliver against Rana one day.

When the Kid was little, Neela told him the story of the Hindu deity Hanuman, who consumed the sun (thinking it was a fruit), was stripped of his powers, and gradually reacquired them to lead an army against forces of evil. This story left a deep mark on the Kid, and helps further his desire for righteous payback.

The Kid finds a high-end nightclub/brothel called Kings, run by Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar), that’s frequented by Rana and his cronies. The Kid swiftly gets hired as a kitchen worker via returning Queenie’s “stolen” wallet and returning it to her (depicted like a Rube Goldbergian system of handoffs among crowded city streets and rooftops). He befriends Alphonso (Pitobash), a gangster working for Queenie who owns a super-charged tuk-tuk and provides most of the film’s comic relief.

After helping Alphonso win a large bet on one of Kid’s matches in exchange for a promotion, the Kid is granted access to the VIP room, where Rana often makes an appearance. The Kid also meets the beautiful Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala), a prostitute working for Queenie who shares the Kid’s deep-seated anger against authority figures.

The stage is set for maximum carnage, complete with a trusty canine who helps transport the Kid’s pistol of choice in a back alley handoff. Suffice to say, however, that the Kid’s machinations don’t go exactly to plan. Hyper violence ensues, the Kid is on the run, and unlikely allegiances form.

He fights resourcefully, and cartoonishly brutally, for the marginalized and to achieve some sort of justice for the wrongs committed against him and his community, starting from the bottom and willing to fight all the way to the top: taking no prisoners along the way as he gradually embodies the Hanuman of legend. 

Indeed, “Monkey Man” is an unrelenting thrill ride from start to finish, directed with sustained energy by Patel. It’s an abrasive, kinetic experience with rough edges that only add to its provocative charm. With balls-to-the-wall (and knives-in-mouths-to-throats) action sequences, cultural representation, and a tragic emotional core (unflinchingly detailing the horrors of India’s caste system and the cycles it perpetuates), “Monkey Man” effectively carves its own niche in the action genre while paying tribute to its cinematic inspirations, more “The Raid” and “Oldboy” than a mere “John Wick” knockoff. 

And boy oh boy, do those action scenes hit hard. “Monkey Man” is chock-full of gonzo, wince-inducing violence (which sometimes doubles as slapstick comedy) that lands with tangible force. Patel and cinematographer Sharone Meir find an excellent balance between clarity and chaos, throwing viewers into the action with dynamic camerawork that runs, flips, and swerves with each strike, putting us right in the thick of it, fighting to keep up with the carnage on display. 

Anything and everything at-hand is used at combatants’ disposal (microwaves, firecrackers, good ole’ chompers), and Patel most assuredly does not cut away from gnarly impacts. The flow of these sequences syncs with the Kid’s own arc, expertly reflecting his growth from an impulsive man seeking justice to someone fighting for a purpose beyond himself. 

Patel, lean and ripped, with expressive eyes that convey a man driven by self-destructive determination, brings pathos and frightening, live-wire energy to the role. We see a man wracked with trauma, guilt, and possessing a fierce desire for revenge, communicating multitudes through his haunted eyes alone as someone willing to go to any length to find some semblance of peace through violence. 

Patel’s performance would, by itself, sell the Kid’s rage and thirst for vengeance, but part of the thrill of “Monkey Man” is how the film brings viewers into his world and mind. Meir’s frenetic, grimy cinematography (complemented by a badass soundtrack and dramatic, percussive score by Jed Kurzel) flies through Yatana’s seedy underbelly and grows more controlled over time, evolving as the Kid evolves, hypnotic in its eventual singularity of form and vision. 

Scattered flashbacks mix in tranquil memories of Neela’s teachings with the shocking massacre of their village, forcefully emphasizing the thoughts that dominate the Kid’s every waking moment and sometimes becoming downright horrific. This establishes the grim momentum of a wronged man charting a path towards revenge and, likely, his own death. 

But later on, when the Kid is saved from near-death and subsequently trained by the hijra (a tribe of third-gender people marginalized by Baba’s government) to confront his trauma and follow in Hanuman’s footsteps, “Monkey Man” becomes almost euphoric. The jagged, at-times clunky film that came before morphs into something more confident, assured, and focused on what it wants to be.

We’re witness to a rousing training montage that’s electric in its musicality and depth of feeling – the claustrophobic intensity of what came before releasing in a kind of focused catharsis for the Kid, and by extension, us as viewers, as the film leans into hallucinogenic imagery and brings in actual news footage of modern day India.

The resulting film, while familiar in its revenge-genre-beats, is almost uncomfortably effective at putting us in the Kid’s psyche: religion and rage guiding him towards bloody salvation underneath the story’s deceptively simple “Eat the Rich” appearance.

It’s to the film’s credit that we’re with the Kid nearly every step of the way, stepping back once the end credits roll to examine what’s been gained and lost along his anarchic path – self-actualization or loss of personhood, and if his actions even mean anything for the future of Yatana. Patel, provocatively, leaves us to come to our own conclusions.

Whether or not the film’s commentary on the state of India today is particularly insightful, too, is up for debate (and something I’m not qualified to evaluate with my limited cultural knowledge), but as a crowd-pleasing action film that finds new avenues into a familiar genre, “Monkey Man” delivers the goods, albeit not for the squeamish. It’s an experience that deserves recognition (and the big screen treatment, thank you Jordan Peele), and signals Patel as a director capable of something truly legendary in the future.

“Monkey Man” is a 2024 action thriller directed by Dev Patel and starring Patel, Sharlto Copley, Adithi Kalkunte, Ashwini Kalsekar, Makarande Deshpande, Sikandar Ker and Sobhita Dhulipala. It is rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, language throughout, sexual content/nudity and drug use, and the runtime is 2 hours, 1 minute. It opened in theatres April 5. Alex’s Grade: A-.

David Lowery’s ‘The Green Knight’ is Hallucinatory Spectacle to Behold

David Lowery’s ‘The Green Knight’ is Hallucinatory Spectacle to Behold

By Alex McPherson
Based on the 14th-century Arthurian tale “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” director David Lowery’s film, aptly titled “The Green Knight,” is an impeccably constructed fantasy epic with bizarre imagery and dense themes begging to be mulled over for years to come. 

The story begins in Camelot, with Gawain (Dev Patel), an aimless young warrior and nephew to King Arthur himself (Sean Harris), getting the chance to finally give his life purpose beyond drinking and cavorting his days away. During a Christmas gathering, the aging King and his wife, Queen Guinnevere (Kate Dickie), draw attention to the fact that Gawain doesn’t have any stories to tell — not yet, at least — and a mysterious, bark-covered giant shows up, calling himself the Green Knight (voiced by Ralph Ineson with imposing gusto).

The gritty medieval Groot offers a challenge to the Round Table — he will allow anyone brave enough to strike a blow against him, so long as they agree to receive the same treatment in one year. Gawain, careless as ever and wanting to impress his company and his suspicious mother, Morgan Le Fay (Sarita Choudhury), agrees to the challenge when nobody else will, promptly decapitating the Knight. He immediately regrets his decision, as the Knight, holding his severed head, gallops away on his horse laughing maniacally. In one year, Gawain must complete his end of the agreement. Oops. 

The clock begins ticking, and once the year passes, Gawain sets out on his journey across a fantastical land to reach the Green Chapel and fulfill his pact. Unsurprisingly, the quest is grueling, and the self-doubting Gawain encounters a variety of strange entities — mischievous themes, a mournful spirit, and a fox companion, among others — that require him to confront his supposedly heroic ideals and his own mortality in the pursuit of becoming a legend. 

Absolutely brimming with cinematic artistry and featuring a magnificent performance from Dev Patel, “The Green Knight” won’t appeal to viewers seeking a more traditional, action-packed epic that spoon-feeds them what to think or how to feel. Rather, Lowery’s masterpiece embraces all the sensory qualities of the film medium to fully transport viewers into Gawain’s journey, which winds up being far more existential than some viewers may be prepared for. There are certainly physical threats to be found along the way, but “The Green Knight” renders most of Gawain’s conflicts internal, as he grapples with his self-imposed burden and slowly but surely grows not only as a warrior, but as a human being, with imperfection to match his courage.

From its opening frames, “The Green Knight” is devoted to walking its own path and being undeniably weird while doing so. There’s tons to feast on stylistically — evocative, period-accurate costuming, lighting that evolves from decorated interiors to fog-drenched forests and blood red lakes, deliciously tactile sound design, and mystical yet lived-in environments, with a score by Daniel Hart fitting for a horror film in its off-kilter, slightly crazed rhythms. All of this is complemented by sweeping, at-times mind-boggling cinematography that flows through the royal interiors and vast landscapes that Gawain traverses, becoming ever-stupefying as Gawain treks onwards, further into his own soul. This is a film that demands to be watched on the biggest screen possible and with limited distractions. 

Of course, Lowery’s film isn’t pure style over substance, and there’s plenty to contemplate in terms of storytelling and characters here. Gawain is a naive and reckless individual who isn’t initially easy to care about but develops in a significant fashion by the end. He’s forced to consider the sacrifices necessary for greatness, the notion of honor itself, and the fallibility of human nature despite illusions of superiority. Like Lowery’s other films, especially “A Ghost Story,” “The Green Knight” is focused on the concept of death, mortality, and Nature’s grip over us all. Indeed, the proceedings are depicted so ambiguously that some viewers may become frustrated with the film’s opaqueness. For this critic, however, the events — especially a nightmarish, darkly poetic sequence late in the film — haven’t left my mind, and keep revealing additional thematic layers the more I ponder them.

Lending “The Green Knight” an emotionally grounded core despite its vagueness, though, is Patel. A subversive casting choice for a story typically dominated by white men, he portrays the warrior’s growing insecurities in a subtle fashion that endears us to him from his first appearance onwards. Alicia Vikander also does excellent work playing dual roles, as Gawain’s lower-class girlfriend, Essel, and as a seductive temptress later on. Ineson, as the Green Knight, is intimidating, but has an aura of warmth and amusing self-awareness nevertheless. Barry Keoghan and Joel Edgerton give memorable turns as a creepy brigand and an uneasily jovial lad that Gawain encounters near the finale. 

There’s a lot to digest once the credits roll — make sure to stay through them —  that I’m eager to dive back into this wondrous, often frightening world to decipher all the symbolism and peculiar characters to unearth more meaning. I haven’t felt this way about many other films released in 2021 so far, but “The Green Knight” stands head and shoulders above most of them in terms of pure intellectual engagement and eye-popping creativity. Cinephiles shouldn’t expect anything less from A24, and viewers should go in knowing that “The Green Knight” engages the mind just as much as the senses, even if multiple viewings are all but required to fully appreciate it.

“The Green Knight” is a 2021 historical drama directed by David Lowery and starring Dev Patel, Joel Edgerton and Alicia Vikander. Rated R for violence, some sexuality and graphic nudity, it has a runtime of 2 hours, 10 minutes. The movie opened in theaters on July 30. Alex’s Grade: A+