2024 R Action 1h 53m
Written/Directed/Produced by Dev Patel, Monkey Man is a well-done entry in the ultra-violent revenge genre. It earns a place with John Wick and Oldboy. If that’s your cup of tea, check it out. It was too violent for me.
Like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, Dev Patel plays an unnamed character with a dark past who has arrived to enact vengeance; I’ll refer to him as Bobby because he uses that alias during part of the movie. Like John Wick, Bobby will stop at nothing to get what he sees as justice. Monkey Man is not a John Wick rip-off, however. It brings a new voice and new perspective to the genre. Monkey Man is set in the worlds of the streets of India and a high-end Indian crime circle.
As a kid, Bobby watches the crime circle burn his neighborhood and kill his mother. Since then, he has spent his life seeking out pain as a penance for not being able to protect his mother. When we meet Bobby he is wearing a monkey mask and battling in an underground mixed martial arts fight club. The plot follows the genre’s formulas but the flavor for how it does it is different. Bobby gets close to the crime circle and makes his move but fails at the end of Act Two. In Act Three, he is trained by a group of outcast, mystical trans women whom the crime group has also wronged. Training montage? Yes. Then proceed with an incredibly bloody climax with a Diwali backdrop. Start of a possible franchise? Could be, but I'm out; too violent for me.
This is neither here nor there, but in the first part of the movie uses bells donging. The bells are so familiar that I got the Top Gun Anthem caught in my head and even started to whistle it. (It’s okay, I was at a private screening).
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