(courtesy IMP Awards)
Revenge is a common enough them in storytelling that having it anchor yet another action thriller feature film might seem a little been-there-done-that-don’t-really-think-I-need-the-T-shirt.
After all, the John Wick series aside which is as superlative as this well-worn genre gets and which deserves all the accolades bountifully handed out to it, revenge feels more than a little tired, almost wholly reductive and uninspiring.
We get why you want revenge but watching it happen, with all the attendant violence characteristic of these types of films just feels like another narrative trip we don’t want to take … and yet, here is Monkey Man, directed, produced, co-written by and starring Dev Patel full to the vengeful brim with all the things we claim to tired of and we cannot and do not want to look away.
That’s almost entirely because, like a magician pulling a rabbit from what you assumed by now must be a very empty, threadbare hat, Patel, who rose to fame on the back of superlatively affecting performances on films like Slumdog Millionaire, Lion and Hotel Mumbai, brings real humanity, vivacity and a raw emotional intimacy to Monkey Man which, despite its occasional lack of focus and indulgence in some offbeat narrative devices, feels, somewhat miraculously, like the first time you’ve seen this story.
That in itself is a feat of originality worth of all the awards you might want to throw its way, but on top of its commitment to making you really feel something for a man consumed and almost constituted of vengeance, Monkey Man invests an immense amount of time in set-up, a build-up that pays off when the violence really hits and which, again astonishingly, presents its protagonist as a flawed man who gets things wrong, a vengeful angel who isn’t a triumphant god apparent but someone whose intent does not always match his execution.
And this is not in some sort of comical fashion; in fact, the last thing Monkey Man is even slightly, remotely, vaguely funny.
Rather, like many of us who might brew an idea of any kind for a good length of time – in the title character’s role this is decades from the inciting event where his beloved mother is killed by a murderously corrupt policeman, Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher), doing the bidding of a ruthlessly hypocritical spiritual guru Babi Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) – and expect it, in our mind’s eye, to unfurl in majestically unquestioningly successful fashion, not everything Patel’s character does plays out the way he expects.
That’s all that can be said on the front doling out far more spoilers than is good for any first-time audience member, but suffice to say, this groundedness and flawed authenticity lends his character a compassion and an understanding from us that he might otherwise lack because his searing intent isn’t precisely matched by the way in which his envisaged plan plays out.
That it will eventually find its hoped-for success is pretty much a given given the genre Monkey Man occupies; but, and here’s another gushing-induced point of brilliance by the film, even though we pretty much know where it’s all headed, and we can likely even pick some of the stopoff points, soaked in necessary blood and violence along the way, Patel brings so much life and vivacious unpredictability to the film that we simply don’t see certain things coming.
He also, rather satisfyingly, invests a metric ton of social commentary into Monkey Man, and while it has a real propensity to weight its narrative momentum down – which to be fair, does succeed at times with a few too many artistic flourishes and meaningfully poetic visual indulgences – it overall adds immeasurably to the point of the story largely because, the eponymous character’s story is that of many Indians who suffer at the hands of a manifestly corrupt and unjust social system.
Where we night ordinarily expect to see justice, injustice prevails with impunity, where social acceptance, say of India’s “third gender” the Hijras who crucially help a beleaguered and hunted Monkey Man at one point, should reign, bigotry and persecution are the orders of the day, and where everyone should have equal access to wealth and resources, rampant and cruel inequality oppresses people with uncaring efficiency.
The country in which Monkey Man takes place is accused by the film of a great many sins with Patel declaring the film to be “an anthem for the underdog, the voiceless, the marginalized [sic]”, and it becomes clear that it needs to be rescued not just by a lone hero who, like the powerful character of mythology, Hanuman, which he venerates thanks to his mother, has forgotten just how powerful he is, but by others pushed to the shadowy margins who need to strike their own blow for the value of their innate humanity.
The sophistication, thoughtfulness and warmly executed and meaningful humanity of Monkey Man is more than matched by its visual skill and presence.
Suffused by music which is intense, unexpectedly melodic and starkly, confrontingly beautiful, Monkey Man presents like a comic book spring to life at times and at others like a raw, otherworldly drama that feels very real but also mythic in its scope and storytelling impact too.
There’s no mistaking how real what has happened to the lead character is and what he must do in a system geared to defeating and thwarting him with extreme prejudice at every turn, but somehow too, thanks to some inspired pacing and visual inventiveness by cinematographer Sharone Meir, it almost has a gritty, dark fairytale quality which is fitting since the Hindu deity hero of Hanuman, a chosen one whom the title character hopes to emulate, and who becomes a prevailing inspiration but also a marker of possible destiny.
For all of the blood and gore, and rest assured Patel does not suggest violence so much as lean heavily and graphically into it, Monkey Man feels like a chillingly intense and often dark work of storytelling art which the film’s look and feel brings to extraordinarily violently beautiful life (and quite often, and deservedly, death).
It’s not perfect, no, and there are times when perhaps too much time is taken with blurry imaging, expositional fullness and psychological meandering, but from a debut director, Monkey Man is nothing short of breathtakingly, audaciously good, a movie which brings superbly rich and fulsome characterisation, robustly intense but rawly, emotionally intimate storytelling and the kind of humanity with which any of us can identify, even if we are not on a decades-long trajectory to vengeful realisation, and turns it into a story for the ages not simply ours but one stretching back into far history and mythology which proves that our basic building blocks remain the same now as then and are affectingly thrilling as they ever were in the right hands which Patel’s most assuredly are.