Monkey Man: the review of Dev Patel’s directorial debut

We’ve seen a lot of revenge films. Like those in boxing, thanks to punches and violence they tell the story of life in a confined place, which however is capable of becoming universal, speaking to everyone. Revenge is a dimension that lives in the mind of those who pursue it: the motivations and ways to pursue it tell us a lot about that character. And also of the historical period in which his race takes place. Let’s think about the Bride of Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino: inspired by The bride in black by François Truffaut, is very different from the French director’s film. Today the reference model of the genre is John Wick and everyone owes something to Bruce Lee. Me too’Actor Dev Patel’s directorial debut is no exception. So how can you find your own identity with so many excellent teachers behind you? Let’s find out in Monkey Man review: a debut not to be missed, which also bewitched Jordan Peelethanks to which it is distributed in the room. In the Italian ones from April 4th.

Patel, who pursued this film for ten years, is also the absolute protagonist: he is Kid, an ex-convict who fights in the ring with a monkey mask. His job is to get massacred: yes, the matches are rigged. His real purpose, however, is another: thanks to the criminal underworld he frequents, he gathers information on corrupt politicians and policemen in the pay of a construction company that caused the death of his mother Neela. It was she who, from a very young age, told him the myth of Hanuman, a figure from the Ramayana, half man and half monkey, linked to the deity Shiva. This is why he chose this animal as his symbol.

Having managed to get a job in the place managed by one of the people involved in the company’s dealings, Kid starts from the bottom, as a dishwasher. From here his slow rise to the top levels of power began. In the meantime he comes into contact with every type of humanity: from girls hired to entertain wealthy clients, to a community of Hijra (third sex officially recognized in India in 2014), transgenders who teach him to find wholeness, embracing both his more fragile and violent sides. As they tell him, for his revenge to be realized, it must become everyone’s revenge.

A dazzling debut

The gestation of Monkey Man has been troubled: first the difficulties related to Covidwhich forced the production to shoot in different locations and save on everything from makeup brushes to props. Then the accidents on set: Patel even broke his hand! Finally the about-face of Netflix, which was supposed to distribute the film via streaming. The film was in fact judged too controversial for the Indian public, accustomed to very patriotic titles. This is where Jordan Peele came in: falling in love with the project, he took it under his wing, suggesting changes to the soundtrack and helping to distribute it, thanks to the good relationships between his Monkeypaw Productions And Universal Pictures. Is it a coincidence that what Patel and Peele have in common is the figure of the monkey? Maybe yes, but it’s fascinating: in both of the authors’ works these figures become central (think of the chimpanzee Gordy in Nope). Animals are in fact a mirror of how we treat everything we do not consider human.

And we often reserve this “non-human” treatment for many of our peers: blacks, women, the poor, people of different religions and sexual orientations. Peele recounts this disparity of vision very well in his work and, to a certain extent, Patel also represents it, even if Monkey Man is above all a action movie full of blood, made by those who love this genre. Alongside the adrenaline, however, there is also social analysis: the disparity between poor and rich in the India that we see in the actor’s debut is obscene. As well as the use of religion to quell the most desperate.

Nope, the review: Jordan Peele in search of the perfect sequence

In telling this, Patel stages crude and crude fight sequences, in which everything is dirty and often even confused, to demonstrate the internal torments of a protagonist who at the beginning is mainly driven by anger and for this reason takes more blows than how many do you give. The director underlines this by filling the film with reflective surfaces: mirrors, shards of glass, aquariums, rivers. Kid is fragmented into hundreds of distorted images, none of which reflects the figure in its entirety. Only when he finds a center does he bring himself, and even his fists, into focus.

Exaggerated, ambitious, often perhaps even smug and blatantly straddling two worlds, that of Bollywood cinema, which represents a recovery of Patel’s origins, and the Hollywood one, in which he grew up and proved to be an excellent performer, Monkey Man it is a meeting of different worlds that are apparently very distant, but which instead gives life to a vital film, full of enthusiasm. Peele saw it long and hard: let’s hope it isn’t the last film directed by Patel.