Minor spoilers for Monkey Man ahead
In a supreme act of loyalty, I waited 21 days to watch Monkey Man with my partner— and thank god, it was worth the wait. My anticipation for this film had been steadily ratcheting up ever since I saw this incredible trailer:
For those who don’t know, Monkey Man is Dev Patel’s directorial debut. It’s an action film set in India, and Patel stars as Kid, a man hellbent on revenge after his village was massacred at the behest of a politically powerful spiritual leader. If that sounds like a familiar formula, it is. Patel is drawing on a long tradition of action and revenge films, but Monkey Man doesn’t feel formulaic, maybe because you sense how hard Patel had to work to get the film made in the first place.
As he told the New York Times, despite having been a bona-fide movie star since Slumdog Millionaire’s release in 2008, he was not “getting offered roles that… had any sort of ass kickery involved or coolness”. When the industry wouldn’t believe that Patel could be an action star, he had to create his own story, be his own director, and give himself the opportunity to prove everyone wrong.
The production was troubled from the start. Logistically, it was interrupted by the pandemic and multiple on-set injuries (Patel broke his hand early on in filming). Thematically, rumor has it that the film’s provocative commentary on Indian politics and religion made it untenable at Netflix, which had originally been set to release it. The film was shelved until Jordan Peele saw it and brought it to Universal, which then gave it a full theatrical release.
Despite the fairytale quality of its rollout, Monkey Man has generated some surprisingly lukewarm reviews. There’s criticism of the pacing, which is deliberately frenetic, and people point to the stylized editing and flashback-heavy structure as evidence of Patel’s greenness. This is his first time directing, it’s true, and we know by now that being a successful actor isn’t perfectly correlated with being a talented director. I won’t deny that there are aspects of Monkey Man that feel wild and out-of-control, like Patel is figuring things out on the fly. But something the criticism doesn’t acknowledge is that it’s exactly the feeling that Patel is just hanging onto this film by the skin of his directorial teeth that gives Monkey Man something so many films are missing: risk.
It was a risk to tell an action story this sincere and this emotional. It was a risk to create an action hero inspired by the Hindu deity of hanuman. It was a risk to build the film around a critique of Indian politics, the caste system, and religion. It was a risk to direct the film so aggressively, trusting that the audience would love Patel behind the camera as much as they loved him in front of it. These risks feel like the result of a director and an actor who knows he might not get another shot, so he’s not going to leave anything on the table. They feel like the result of someone who knows he has a story that he simply has to tell.
It’s hard not to compare Monkey Man to a film like Road House, which also premiered at SXSW this year. Road House is a remake of the 80s action classic starring a bulked-up Jake Gyllenhaal, and it should have had the best fight scenes of the year. Instead, Road House is completely toothless— its original commentary sanded down into the weakest good guys vs. bad guys cliche you can imagine. Road House relies completely on your knowledge of the original film; it takes no risks to exist, and it simply mines its IP to make you feel some simulacrum of what the real version once inspired.
Monkey Man, meanwhile, almost got shelved because of the story it wanted to tell. The provocation of its commentary, the risk its creator is taking, is built into the bones of the film, and it trickles down all the way through every clenched-jaw action set piece. In the final act, Kid must fight his way through a host of guards, clawing his way to the top of a building where his true target resides. As he climbs each level, the enemies he spars with become more powerful, more prestigious, and more dangerous. Kid’s journey is literal and metaphorical— with each floor, he’s forcing his way up the caste system, destroying the boundaries that have oppressed him his entire life.
And no one can say that Dev Patel doesn’t do it in style. From start to finish, this movie absolutely rips. Kitchen utensils have never been used like this, and Patel’s teeth deserve an Oscar of their own. This is scrappy, clever, brutal fighting that’s savvily undergirded by the emotional and thematic weight that Monkey Man has in spades. This movie takes big swings, and when it’s hitting this many of them, I can forgive the few that miss. With new directors - especially directors like Dev Patel who are squeezing opportunities out of Hollywood that they’ve simply never been given - I’d much rather too much ambition, too much risk, and too much heart than the other way around.
Culture Crumbs
Ke Huy Quan for Port Magazine… I aspire to this level of cool
Some good old fashioned insane celebrity gossip in the form of the simmering Timmy/Kylie pregnancy rumors (featuring the phrase “signature pregnancy tracksuit”)
Kirsten Dunst on Jesse Plemons’ surprise performance in Civil War, cementing their status as one of Hollywood’s cutest couples: “We're lucky Jesse did this for us. Alex [Garland] is lucky that he's my husband and he was free”
As someone who has never watched The Bachelor, the wild ride of the Golden Bachelor getting divorced three months after his nationally televised wedding
The need to see Challengers yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s all for this issue! Thank you for reading and go see Monkey Man if you haven’t already!!!