Monkey Man (Mini-Review)

Monkey Man is the directorial debut of Dev Patel. When Bobby was but a child, his village was destroyed and ever since then the need for vengeance has been in his blood. He takes jobs all in the pursuit of finally killing those who had destroyed everything he ever loved. Monkey Man was released in 2024. It was directed by Dev Patel. It stars Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, and Vipin Sharma.

There are no post or mid credit scenes.

This movie has an interesting reason for being shown on the big screen. Originally it was just going to be thrown onto the streaming service Netflix. But Jordan Peele saw it and decided to release it under his production company aka Monkeypaw Productions. It's great that Peele decided to work so this movie wouldn't be squandered on a streaming service.

While there are exciting action sequences, there are even more quiet moments. These quiet moments help flesh out why you should care about Bobby, whose real name is never given in the movie, and also set up suspense. You want something, anything, to happen because action would let you release the building tension inside of yourself. If the action scenes were done poorly, I would complain with the long waits between action sequences.

I've never watched a Bollywood movie before. All I know is that they're basically a musical. Yet what this movie does with music during action sequences brought my limited knowledge of Bollywood movies to mind. When I looked up the trivia for this movie on IMDB, which I tend to do during the credits, I saw Patel was inspired by Bollywood movies. So maybe their influence is felt more in his directorial debut than I noticed.

I'm glad that the rape scene was cut. The rape still happens but you focus mostly on Bobby's reaction. Which is a better choice as this rape is what helps drive Bobby on his path to vengeance. He lost his home, his mother, and he saw his mother raped. Why wouldn't he be traumatized to the point he can only focus on avenging her?

Now this isn't to say there is no kindness in Bobby. He is able to treat others with courtesy and decency throughout the movie. It's just his main drive is to kill. He gets jobs merely to have a better chance at killing. When he starts to doubt himself, he gets out of his funk by becoming a better fighter. Kindness is there, but violence is at the core of his being.

I would recommend Monkey Man to those looking for a good action movie.