Monkey Man

It’s a satisfying moment where the cultural significance and influence of a film or series is realised in real time.

It doesn’t happen to a lot of modern films as so much has been done before but, after a watch of Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, it’s clear that the John Wick franchise has cemented itself as an influential and important pillar of action cinema (with a mention as well to The Raid, 3 years the senior).

Monkey Man is no mere pastiche or homage to these modern touchstones though and strives itself to take the next step and push the action film further.

It’s everything you’d expect of a young, first time Director. It’s fast, frantic, bold and in your face but also a little scattershot, a tad uneven and doesn’t quite resolve itself in the right places.

The first 45 minutes are an absolute whirlwind that will have your eyes glued to the screen. As we meet Patel’s unnamed protagonist, and begin to understand his routines and motivations, we luxuriate in the fictional Indian city setting.

Read it as a riposte to some of the criticisms levelled at Slumdog Millionaire if you wish but these early scenes are truly visceral, you can almost smell, taste and touch this place and some of the editing is absolutely brilliant.

It gets to the point where everything is so fast-paced, and the camera never sits still, that you are pleading for a bit of a break. That duly comes but, unfortunately, it breaks the film’s flow so much that it largely derails it as we follow the story to its conclusion.

After such a barnstorming opening, the fact that the movie resorts to so many generic action movie cliches in its back half (an injury he shouldn’t recover from but does after a long fade to black, a ‘spiritual hallucinatory awakening’ where we finally see the full backstory that has only been drip-fed before, a training montage and a climactic battle that ends all too quickly as well as being something the hero seems woefully ill-prepared for) is a bit of a shame.

It isn’t all bad. These cliches are action movie 101 for a reason and some of the themes and subtle changes made here are interesting and worthy. However, these potential political motives aren’t really fleshed out and we also get two interesting side characters who are almost completely forgotten in the final scenes.

So it’s great entertainment, a solid action film and an extremely promising directing debut but it doesn’t quite reach its full potential. Very exciting to see what may happen next though.

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