Monkey Man is a tale of two halves… if you can bear the shitshow shambles of the first half, you might find a good movie in the second. But what do I know? Everyone seems to be loving this flick so maybe I missed a meeting.
The flick is written, directed, and starring Dev Patel so I wanted to like it. It’s about a guy in India trying to infiltrate high society for reasons. He buys a gun with no appreciable skill in shooting it and plays the gambling patsy in underground MMA fights.
The flick has zero interest in telling you why you should give a damn about the main character. Or what he’s doing. Or who he is. Or who the bad guys are. Or what they did in the first place. Only the fact the the main character is played by Patel even clues you in that he’s even the hero. The movie has zero interest in telling us anything. T
And it takes a solid 70 minutes to get a backstory and motivation… and it’s such a basic blob of a story that there’s no reason to have kept it hidden so long. I spent the entire time wondering when he’d take a blow to the head so we could actually get a flashback and figure out why we should care about this guy.
There’s a big action scene prior to this 70 minute mark that is a jumble nightmare of quick cutting and shaky cam incomprehensibility. It was such a muddle that I couldn’t believe it was being passed off as a modern action film… one that deliberately name drops John Wick.
But it turns out everything I just complained about was an artistic choice. Because once we get to the final act and the main character has leveled up, the flick becomes the poster child for how motivation, backstory, and actual character matters to a film. It also gives us a pretty kick-ass action scene that proves the shitshow in the first half was intentional. Or maybe the stunt team was on vacation and only showed up for the final act? Who knows.
The film is Dev Patel’s baby and is set in India but is produced by Western studios. It’s mostly spoken in English with some subtitled dialog. There’s a lot of Indian mythology, culture, and politics they try to explain briefly, but it only hand-waves most of it. Credit for trying and it’s more on me for not getting all the metaphors.
This flick will ever remain an object lesson in how to save your garbage movie. I can’t see ever sitting through this muddled mess again but I have to admit the film redeems itself in its final act. It’s still getting a middling 2.5 though… the final act gets a three but you have to waddle knee-deep in trash to get there.
Score: 69