At one point in Monkey Man, the nameless protagonist played by Dev Patel duels with an ax-wielding pimp in a seedy brothel, while Bappi Lahiri’s Ooh La La plays in the background. A few minutes later, Patel rises from a state of unconsciousness to find a statue of the half-man, half-woman god Ardhanareshwar in front of him, and the leader of a transgender hijra community next to him. A few more minutes later, a group of hijras ogle a shirtless Patel as he punches a gunny sack full of rice in sync with the frenetic tabla playing of Ustad Zakir Husain. This passage sums up the spirit of Monkey Man: an out-and-out Hollywoodesque action film culturally rooted in India.
Like most revenge stories, the plot is wafer-thin. The lanky protagonist is a monkey mask-wearing underground fighter who goes by Monkey Man. But fighting in the ring is only a means to progress in his larger fight against a godman Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) and his henchman, police officer Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher) who killed his mother. Along the way, we see a lot of hand-to-hand combat set to an eclectic soundtrack, and meet the colorful characters that populate Yatana, a fictional city modeled along Mumbai. Add to that gore that teeters on the edge of self-indulgence, a dash of Indian mythology, and some political commentary.
All of this is a lot to pack into one film, and as a result, the film falters on multiple counts. But despite its shortcomings, Monkey Man is engaging throughout its runtime – the novelty of its craft and the provocative politics help the whole film rise above the sum of its parts.
The Good
Patel has spoken at length about his cinematic influences, and he never tries to mask his inspiration. The gore of South Korean and Hong Kong films, the trademark man in a suit beating up bad guys sequences from John Wick, and the overt tributes to Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon are in plain sight. One fast-edited sequence in which multiple courier boys transport a parcel through the alleys of a slum could fit right into Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, the film that launched Patel’s career over a decade ago.
But Patel and his cinematographer, Sharone Meir, manage to establish a distinct visual style for the film. Much of the action sequences play out through tight frames and extreme close-ups. This framing feels claustrophobic at times but situates you always in the thick of things.
The dialog, primarily English with some Hindi thrown in, is spare and refreshingly not over-expository. Between the breathless action sequences, the screenplay also allows for a handful of laugh-out-loud moments, which mostly land. This is the kind of film that does not require heavy lifting from its actors, but the cast mostly does well. Patel’s gangly frame is not the first that comes to mind when someone tells an action-packed revenge story, but he leans into it; his scrappy Monkey Man doesn’t always come out looking slick, finds himself face down and bloody, even using his teeth to get out of sticky situations if necessary.
The Bad
One of the biggest disappointments is the film’s treatment of the supporting cast. Pitobash, for instance, plays Alphonso, a drug dealer who rides a tricked-out, turbo-charged rickshaw. With an almost endearing sleaziness, he delivers some of the best lines of the film and comes the closest to being the protagonist’s sidekick in the first half of the film, before he is unceremoniously dumped in the second half. Similarly, Vipin Sharma plays Alpha, a leader of a group of hijras, whose arc feels underwritten and hence, their actions unmotivated. Shobhita Dhulipala plays a brooding escort who adds little to the plot and doesn’t figure in the protagonist’s emotional arc either.
We learn about the protagonist’s traumatic past through flashbacks of his childhood in a remote village surrounded by the wilderness. Here, his mother brought him up on stories of the Indian monkey god Hanuman and instilled in him a reverence for their land before the evil godman Baba Shakti (Deshpande) and Rana Singh (Kher) raze the village to make way for a new ashram.
In the present day, Baba Shakti has emerged as a cultural icon and a kingmaker endorsing a far-right candidate (who dresses like an Indian neta but inexplicably speaks like a Lord in the House of Commons). To defeat this megalomaniac godman, the protagonist takes inspiration from the stories of Hanuman and owns his Monkey-Man persona. Though not over-explained, we learn enough about the protagonist to fully believe in him and his quest for justice. That’s not the case with Baba Shakti.
I would argue that in revenge stories, the villain matters just as much as the protagonist. Learning about their origin stories, the trauma that informs their decisions and their actions can humanize them, or make them more terrifying for the viewer. In the case of Baba Shakti, we know he is evil because he does evil things, but we never learn why. Is he just a profiteering thug who wants to fleece people in the name of religion, or is he actually a bigoted hate-monger? Is he both, or something else altogether?
Unfortunately, we never find out, resulting in a perpetually smug, barely menacing godman who seems shoehorned into the film to make a political statement.
The Provocative
In a montage that describes Baba Shakti’s rise to power, we see protesters denouncing the deaths of minorities. He makes a speech in which he calls on his audience to reclaim “our” culture and way of life, which has been taken over by “them”. The film never mentions any organization by name, but the target is clearly the right-wing establishment in today’s India.
Then, deploying the legend of Hanuman through Monkey Man to defeat Shakti is a narrative tool that pits Hinduism against Hindutva. The film dares to suggest that maybe the biggest threat to divisive Hindutva could come from within Hinduism.
The film’s bold politics has added to the makers’ already long list of troubles. After a chaotic production process that involved delays due to accidents, and location changes because of the pandemic, Netflix picked the film for their slate of 2023 releases. As the film was finishing up post-production, Netflix pulled their support. It has been reported that the politics of the film might have been the reason why Netflix pulled out, but there has been no official comment from Netflix. Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions then stepped in and pulled the film out of limbo, and the film made it to a successful theatrical run in the United States and most of the world.
But the film’s India release remains uncertain, and the original release date of April 19 has been pushed forward indefinitely. Even if the film releases in India, it is likely to undergo some cuts and changes; for example, the saffron political banners from the film have been changed to red.
I liked the fact that despite the film’s brazen political stance, it never feels preachy. There is no rousing speech or monologue in which the protagonist appeals to the millions who evidently support Baba Shakti. There is no acknowledgement of the fact that at the end of the day, the government’s actions reflect the will of the people who elected them into power. The protagonist’s fight feels more personal than political. In this light, the film feels more like a revenge story in which the villain happens to be a right-wing godman, and not a film that sets out to make a political statement against a political ideology.
Either way, the thought experiment that I was left with was, is the version of Ram that the film’s Hanuman worships the same as the Ram that the right-wing establishment in India holds up as their definitive icon? The answer of course, will not be the same for everyone.
