Dev Patel's new action movie Monkey Man is so much more than the next John Wick
Big Screen Spotlight | Dev Patel's directorial debut is blazing it♚s own trail

Dev Patel's directorial debut, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Monkey Man, is a brutal, no holds barred beatdown of a movie. The film focuses on Patel's protagonist, known only as Kid, who is on a bloody quest for vengeance spurred by an unspeakable crime from his past. The mission brings him up against the corrupt ruling classes in a political but personal struggle. Naturally, the parallels to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:John Wick are obvious.
It's something the film itself is very aware of, too, considering it name checks John Wick early in the runtime when Patel's Kid is buying himself a gun. The ♏neon-lit action sequences, fr⛄equent needle drops, and even Patel's sharp black suit all feel like homages, deliberate or not. Many reviews and reactions to the movie have drawn the comparison. But Monkey Man is so much more than the next John Wick.
A labor of love
For one thing, Monkey Man is a film that could only have been made by Patel. The title refers to the Hindu deity Hanuman, a figure the protagonist's late mother compared him to as a child – and, as an adult, Kid wears a mon🦹key mask as he participates in vicious underground fights. But Patel himself also has a personal connection to Hanuman.
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This isn't the only way Patel has poured himself into the movie, either. Product📖ion took a huge physical toll on the actor/director, which included broken bones – necessitating a screw in one hand – an eye infection, and a torn shoulder. A series of catastrophic setbacks threatened to knock production off course entirely, too, though Patel was able to salvage the process with considerable effort and innovation (including shooting on his own cell phone and glueing broken tables back together after he called cut, ready to go again). This was, in every sense, a labor of love.
Into the action
Then there's the fact that the film was almost consigned to oblivion entirely, after a distribution deal with Netflix fell through: Jordan Peel𒈔e and his production company, the aptly named Monkeypaw Productions, rescued the movie from obscurity in a fitting ♐twist of fate and brought it to Universal for theatrical release.
Monkey Man truly is a film that deserves to be seen on the big screen, with those pulse-pounding, thumping action sequences the kind that need a massive canvas and maxed out speakers. The hand-to-hand fighting draws on so much more than John Wick's (excellent) action, too, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:which is something𝐆 Patel himself🤪 has pointed out. "For me – I'm a huge fan of the franchise – but, you know, this film is born from my love of so much action cinema, from Bruce Lee to Sammo Hun☂g, to Jet Li to Jackie Chan, to Korean cinema that totally changed my life, and also Bo♔llywood," Patel told . "It's a weird cocktail of all these things that I've injected into this film."
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Beyond the action, there's a cultural specificity to Monkey Man that sets it firmly apart from John Wick's globetrotting adventures. Monkey Man is unflinchingly unafraid to delve into politics and class in its setting of a fictionalized Indian city, with the plot revolving around Kid's quest to topple the corrupt chief꧒ of police responsible for his mother's murder, and the religious leader the police chief supports, all while posing as an invisible, mistreated member of a swanky establishment's w🌄aitstaff. There's also the Hanuman mythology, of course, as well as a significant portion of the film dedicated to Kid getting the spiritual and physical help he needs from his city's subjugated transgender and gender-nonconforming community.
Vipin Sharma's Alpha, a trans woman, is particularly instrumental in helping Kid remember who he is and the importance of his roots in one moving, hair-raising scene. "The pain, it will leave you once it's finished teaching you," Alpha says, in wise words that resonate with the entire film. "This is an anthem for the underdog, the voiceless, the♑ marginalized," Patel told , and he couldn't be more correct.
Being the next John Wick is a perfectly fine thing for a film to be, of course, but it's clear Patel had altogether different ambitions when he embarked on the epic undertaking that is Monkey Man. It's an astonishingly self-assured directorial debut with Patel'🐓s fingerprints all over it, with plenty to say, and frenetic, skillful action that captivates. In short, it's so much more than the next John Wick, and that's a very good thing.
Monkey Man is out now in UK cinemas. For more on what else you should be watching at the cinema, be sure to check out the rest of our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Big Screen Spotlight series.

I'm the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media,ಌ and also wrote 💧on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.