Monkey Man is a 2024 action movie starring and directed and written by Dev Patel. It takes place in a city in India where a boxer named Kid decides to fight against the city’s oppressive and corrupt government.
Monkey Man is first and foremost an action movie and it has some of the best action scenes I have ever seen in a movie. I really loved how in a lot of the fight scenes Kid wouldn’t have a weapon on him so he would just fight with random objects because it provided fun creative fight scenes while also feeling realistic. A lot of the fight scenes also included people stealing each other’s weapons, which was unique and really cool. The action scenes were shot brilliantly and were really brutal in such a satisfying way. The action never felt too fake in any way. It always felt raw and intense and real. The action peaks in the film’s incredible and electrifying final act that I felt like rewatching it as soon as it was over. This movie was Dev Patel’s directorial debut which adds even more to how stunning of a directorial feat Monkey Man is.
Something that took away from the action scenes was the score. The score by Jed Kurzel was really over the top and it felt like it was trying so hard to make the action scenes feel epic, when they already did, so them just insisting how cool the fight scenes were took away from that feeling, rather than adding to it. There were times when I really liked the sound of the music that was playing, but I just disliked how it went with what was happening on screen. However, the choices of licensed songs used throughout the movie were all pretty great and complemented the scenes they were played during pretty well.
Dev Patel’s performance as the protagonist was extraordinary. He plays the character’s trauma, despair, and resolve perfectly with so many affecting facial expressions that felt so genuine. Sharlto Copley’s performance as the announcer for the underground boxing ring that Kid fights in was also pretty great.
The film has a good screenplay that does the job for the movie it’s in but isn’t anything amazing. The main character is well characterized, specifically in the second half, and it has moments of great writing, such as a wonderfully written training montage, but there are definitely parts of the movie where the dialogue is pretty uninteresting and certain characters feel generic and uninspired, specifically the final villain. The motivations of the main character are conveyed very well and the movie does a great job of showing the corruption in the Indian government, as well as showing how minorities, such as the transgendered community, stay strong despite oppression, which I thought was handled in a really beautiful way.
I made it clear since my first review in this publication that screenplays are what I enjoy most about movies, so it is very rare that I fall in love with a movie with a screenplay that I think leaves a lot to be desired, but the sheer exhilaration that the action scenes made me feel in this film makes up for it. I am giving Monkey Man an 8/10 and I can’t wait to see what Dev Patel directs next, because I would watch a million more action movies made by him.
