The British actor’s directorial debut is a visceral love letter to global action cinema that’s an exhilarating, if messy, ride
With his directorial debut Monkey Man, which he also co-wrote and stars in, Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, Lion) cements himself both as an action star with A-list ambitions and a competent, resourceful B-movie director. This extravagantly violent and exuberantly messy revenge flick is set in a contemporary India (in a fictional city called Yatana) in which there seems to be a neon-drenched, sleaze-sodden brothel to suit every budget. It’s a place where power and money pollute, and where the poor are not just invisible, they are regarded as being less than human and little more than animals.
Patel takes this idea and runs with it, by incorporating the Indian caste system and class divisions into the story and drawing from the Hindu legend of the monkey-faced demigod Hanuman. When we meet Patel’s unnamed character – he calls himself Bobby, a name plucked at random from a carton of toilet bleach, but is referred to throughout as Kid – he is a scrappy slum-dweller carving out a living, one brutal beating at a time, as an underground bare fist fighter wearing a crude monkey mask. Patel litters the picture with further bestial imagery: the owner of the fight club is named Tiger (Sharlto Copley); Kid’s opponent in the ring takes his fight persona from a snake. And once Kid has embarked upon his campaign of retribution, he will eventually face up to a man who styles himself “the Lion of India”. This is a revenge movie with a beast in its heart and plenty of bite (literally, on multiple occasions).
