Became famous with Slumdog Millionairesubscribed to the roles of the Indian in English and American films, usually cast as a nerd and gifted with a face and physique perfect for the sensitive parts rather than for the tough ones, Dev Patel for a few years he has been trying to change his career and stop being “the reassuring and non-threatening Indian”. Monkey Man it’s not just an action film in which he is the protagonist (he had already been in Attack in Mumbai), but one that he wrote and directed for exactly that purpose! This it is a film that makes sense and involves precisely because he thinks a revenge story about an actor like Dev Patelnot a superman whose dog was killed like John Wick, but someone with tenderness in his eyes, who shouldn’t support those efforts and who instead goes beyond his potential driven by something inside himself.
Monkey Man he is certainly coarse in his feelings (but, again, it is an element that comes from Indian cinema, it is not a flaw, if anything a characteristic), and he can afford it precisely because his protagonist appears as the opposite of the superman. Dev Patel is always someone who makes it, barely makes it. When he enters the scene, even before anything happens, he is already in difficulty, he carries an ever greater burden on himself than that of the others. An action hero like this, in a story like this, is perfect. And it was not at all obvious that, as a director, Patel would be able to understand what place his own body and face occupy in a story of great action and how to use it. Even more difficult was to hypothesize that in this attempt to establish himself as a good actor for action roles, he could turn one of the most interesting action films of the year.
