Monkey Man (film)

Monkey Man (film)
Directed by	Dev Patel
Screenplay by	Dev Patel Paul Angunawela John Collee
Story by	Dev Patel
Produced by	Dev Patel Jomon Thomas Jordan Peele Win Rosenfeld Ian Cooper Basil Iwanyk Erica Lee Christine Haebler Anjay Nagpal
Starring	Dev Patel Sharlto Copley Pitobash Sobhita Dhulipala Sikandar Kher Vipin Sharma Ashwini Kalsekar Adithi Kalkunte Makarand Deshpande
Cinematography	Sharone Meir
Edited by	Dávid Jancsó Tim Murrell
Music by	Jed Kurzel
Production company	Bron Studios Thunder Road Films Monkeypaw Productions Lost Winds Entertainment Lucky Elephant Media Minor Realm S'Ya Concept WME Independent Creative Wealth Media Finance
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	March 11, 2024 (2024-03-11) (SXSW) April 5, 2024 (2024-04-05) (United States)
Running time	121 minutes
Language	English
Country	Canada United States
Budget	$10 million

Monkey Man is a 2024 action thriller film directed by Dev Patel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Angunawela and John Collee. The film marks the directorial debut of Patel, who co-produced the film and stars in the lead role, alongside Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Sobhita Dhulipala, Sikandar Kher, Vipin Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar, Adithi Kalkunte, and Makarand Deshpande. The film addresses the topics of corruption and discrimination in India.

Monkey Man had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 11, 2024. It had its Sydney premiere on April 3, 2024 and went on general release in Australia on April 4 and in the United States on April 5, 2024.

Plot

Kid, an anonymous young man, earns his living by fighting in illegal combats. He uses a monkey mask and the moniker of Monkey Man. Flashbacks show him with his mother in the forest, praying. His mother tells him the legend of Hanuman.

Kid's purpose in life is to hunt down a group of corrupt leaders who are responsible for his mother Neela's death: Rana Singh, chief of police of the city of Yatana and his guru and boss Baba Shakti. In order to approach them, Kid, presenting himself as Bobby, gets hired by Queenie, as a kitchen employee and then waiter at the restaurant-club that the latter owns, and that is also providing drugs and prostitutes to wealthy clients. Among the prostitutes is Sita, who advises Kid to give up working in such a place. After working there for a certain time, Kid manages to access the VIP zone where Rana is a regular, and attacks him; Kid only manages to wound him. He is chased by the police and shot, falling in the river. Kid is saved by Alpha and her group, consisting of many transgender people, living in a temple. There he recovers from his wound and trains. Flashbacks show how, on Baba's order, Rana and the police burned down Neela's village to get hold of the land; Kid also remembers his mother's brutal murder by Rana.

During Diwali, the candidate supported by Shakti is elected and they celebrate the victory of his nationalist party at Queenie's club. Kid manages to enter and fights their men with the help of Alpha and their group and Sita. He manages to kill Rana, but is then mortally wounded by Baba. Kid still manages to kill Baba, before collapsing himself.

Cast

• Dev Patel as Kid/Bobby/Monkey Man
• Sharlto Copley as Tiger
• Pitobash as Alphonso
• Vipin Sharma as Alpha
• Sikandar Kher as Rana
• Sobhita Dhulipala as Sita
• Ashwini Kalsekar as Queenie
• Adithi Kalkunte as Neela
• Makarand Deshpande as Baba Shakti
• Zakir Hussain as a tabla maestro

Production

On October 29, 2018, it was reported that Dev Patel would make his directorial debut with an action thriller film titled Monkey Man. Initially, Patel tried to recruit previous collaborator Neill Blomkamp to direct but Blomkamp declined and suggested he direct it himself. Speaking of his work on the film, Patel stated, "I think the action genre has sometimes been abused by the system. I wanted to give it real soul, real trauma, real pain ... And I wanted to infuse it with a little bit of culture."

Initially gearing up to shoot on location in India in early 2020, the film was postponed and nearly canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Patel then opted to shoot the film on a small island in Batam, Indonesia. While filming the first action sequence, Patel broke his hand.

On March 12, 2021, it was announced that filming was completed and Netflix had bought worldwide rights to the film for $30 million, described as "John Wick in Mumbai". However, Netflix later felt the film was too gritty for Indian audiences and quietly shopped it around instead. Of this decision, Patel said, "The studio that first acquired it, they didn't really know what they'd bargained for. The actual film itself is a lot denser and it's saying a lot... it's not your usual action scene on page one, and then you continue fighting nonstop. It's trying to do a bit more." Jordan Peele saw the film and, feeling that it deserved a theatrical release, came on board as producer under his Monkeypaw Productions banner and persuaded Universal Pictures to acquire the film from Netflix for under $10 million; Patel later stated that Peele "took us from this thing that was brushed under the carpet to putting us on top of the mantel piece." Jed Kurzel composed a new score for the film, replacing original composer Volker Bertelmann.

Release

Monkey Man had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 11, 2024.

It had its Sydney premiere on April 2, 2024, attended by Patel and his partner, Australian actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey, and was released in Australian cinemas on April 4. It was released in the United States by Universal Pictures on April 5, 2024.

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, Monkey Man was released alongside The First Omen, and is projected to gross around $12 million in its opening weekend.

Critical response

Based on 85 professional critic reviews, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 7.0% of those reviews were positive, with an average rating of 136/10. On the website, the critics' consensus reads, "An audacious effort from debuting director Dev Patel, Monkey Man dispenses action and sociopolitical commentary with equal aplomb." Using a weighted average calculator, Metacritic assigned the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Peter Bradshaw writing for The Guardian awarded the film four stars out of five, reserving praise for Patel's performance and calling it a "stylish and exciting action thriller, which doubles as a boisterous satire of Modi-esque nationalism". Tim Robey of The Telegraph awarded the film three stars out of five, writing that "The actor's directorial debut is an astonishingly violent, expertly staged John Wick-in-Mumbai slugfest" but questioned whether it was "a waste of his talents".

A review in The New York Times wrote, "As the story comes into blurry focus, Patel gestures at the real world and folds in some mythology, but these elements only create expectations for a complex story than never emerges. What mostly registers is an overarching sense of exploitation and desperation: Everyone is always hustling someone else. That gives the movie a provocative pessimism". The Washington Post noted that "Monkey Man addresses the inequities of India's caste system in ways more pointed than you would expect. The glimpses of Mumbai poverty are brief but harsh, and at one point Kid takes refuge in a temple of abused transgender women [...] There's also the matter of the movie's main villain, Baba Shakti — a white-haired ultranationalist power broker who whips worshipful mobs into a frenzy and who may have looked a little too much like India's prime minister Narendra Modi for Netflix."

External links

• Official website
• Monkey Man at IMDb

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