Behind Monkey Man, there is a man seeking revenge while Indian society seems more divided than ever, where the spiritual mixes with the political, where corruption seems to have reached all spheres. Behind Monkey Man, there is Dev Patel, a talented actor discovered by the general public in the series Skins and Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, who here is making his first directorial debut. Behind Monkey Man, there are inspirations, but above all, a real desire to make cinema.
Let’s start with the beginning. Dev Patel is a British comedian of Indian origin born on April 23, 1990. Then fast forward to Monkey Man, 34 years later. Film in which the actor ET, now director, intends to reconcile both Hindu mythology, a look at the Indian people, and his very American influences around the science of foolery.
He plays Kid, a young man who saw his mother murdered by the corrupt police chief of the (fictional) Indian town of Yatana when he was a child. From now on, he earns his living and absorbs his pain behind a monkey mask in clandestine rings headed by the all too rare (and all too secondary) Sharlto Copley. He has only one obsession: to get closer to the person responsible for his ills in order to wreak vengeance.
However, it would be crude to reduce Monkey Man to a simple revenge story. Presented at the SXSW festival, the feature film received a rave reception which, if it is somewhat exaggerated (we will come back to that), is not undeserved as the proposition is not content to be a simple “under John Wick” as the Hollywood industry serves us in packs of twelve every year.
Claimed influences
Obviously, the connection with the saga of Chad Stahelski must be made. It is inevitable. In his way of presenting his Monkey Man as an implacable avenger who will gain his status as a divinity, like the legend of Hanuman which opens the film. In his way of presenting his action by level, like a sort of video game, where the man ignores blows and wounds to gain his immortality with each enemy fallen at his feet. Many of the elements are borrowed from the exploits of Keanu Reeves, so that the comparison is obvious to us.
A voluntary and researched comparison by Dev Patel, black belt in taekwondo since the age of sixteen and physically transformed for the needs of the role. Alongside fight coordinator Brahim Chab, he also hired several members of the John Wick team and the team of the genre’s true revolutionary (sorry John), The Raid.
There is an ostensible desire to take inspirations where they are found within film noirs, revenge films, bloody action films, and it would be throwing stones too gratuitously to accuse Monkey Man of plagiarism without envy , especially since Patel inserts his own vision into the story, his own way of bringing the fight.
Gorilla in the mist
Monkey Man is far from being a film where we constantly cast aspersions on the bad guy. We can even say that the action knows how to be desired where the first extracts put forward by the promotional campaign suggested that it was going to hit much more regularly.
Yes, there is action, especially during a third act where all the violence erupts without breathing, not without sweating. When Patel finally lets the horses loose, he does so with the generosity of a man who is genuinely having fun behind the camera (and in front of it); plays with changes in musical tones and camera angles to the rhythm of the new arenas. Patel seems to want to summon all of action cinema at a breakneck pace, seeking to explore all the possibilities that the medium offers him. Honesty pushes us to say that we would have done the same.
His staging intends to differentiate each part of his story as so many markers of evolution of his character, moving from confused close-ups to the stability of his conclusion, as if the director and the character were gaining in maturity. However, this teeming style has its limits and if there is the desire, the budding filmmaker lacks experience.
Because Monkey Man suffers from a lack of balance which often makes things messy. Patel sometimes tests everything at the same time, like during an escape where the editing alternates between the daring (not to say jaw-dropping) plan and the tiring epileptic. Man does not want to simplify his task and if we recognize that he is taking risks, we can only see the other side of the coin.
We also salute Patel’s desire not to let the story be swallowed up by the action. He wishes to tell something other than a quest for revenge through a delicate portrait of an India divided between its desire for change and its traditions, giving us to see, within this fictitious city, an entire Indian society of its poorest population and those who strut in luxury, without hiding the most corrupted parts on either side.
However, here again, the act remains unfinished and laborious. His incarnation of revenge, then of justice, does not mark his change of state of mind enough to make the difference felt, so that we insist on the evolution of a character when it is not felt. . And then there is this duration. 120 minutes. Although we understand the intentions behind each scene, we find this lack of balance where certain major sequences take place in a simple handful of images where a flashback can take up far too much importance without providing any added value in the face of to the exact same flashback, five minutes ago. We therefore remain with an impression of heaviness, Dev Patel having brushed the hair of his Monkey Man, without managing to thin it out. However, we have seen experienced directors much more excited behind the camera than the young man, and for that alone, the monkey can stand proudly in the competition ring.
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