Why You Liked … Monkey Man

Have you ever seen a god bleed?

Dev Patel’s outstanding directorial debut Monkey Man is a risky movie. It’s not risky because it skirts around Hollywood’s addiction to franchises by actually finishing a fucking story. It’s not risky because it uses a predominantly non-white cast, with non-Western backgrounds.

It’s risky because it shines a light on the gods of today, the evil they do, and how we can be lured into being complicit for the simple sin of wanting more than the scraps we’re given. It doesn’t ask why we worship, because we know the answer to that. It instead invites us to view the consequences.

More Fire Than Wick

Monkey Man is easy to dismiss as another John Wickalike, but it quickly reveals a deeper narrative. The trailer punches hard on a story of revenge. Dev Patel plays Kid, an orphan from a town destroyed by the powerful and rich so they can become richer and more powerful. But where Kid starts as a revenge-driven antihero, he evolves into a symbol of larger spiritual and societal themes. 

We find him at the start of the movie having forgotten his mother’s stories of Hanuman, yet haunted by her ghost. Instead of being the avatar of the monkey god of wisdom, strength, and courage, he is throwing fights in an underground ring, taking a beating for a handful of rupees. Kid’s engine is fuelled by the fires of revenge. He has one goal: to kill the evil Rana Singh, the man who razed his village. At the start, he can’t even remember the full litany of Rana’s crimes. Not even the details of his mother’s death remains; he knows she died. He knows it was wrong. And so he seeks to right this wrong by killing the guy responsible.

If this sounds a lot like John Wick, do not adjust your set. Monkey Man has a further trick up its sleeve. It wants to give us, and Patel’s Kid, more than revenge. It wants to give us hope, but it also serves a warning. The gods we’ve worshipped are powerful, and the powerful rarely want to give up what they’ve gained. It reminds us that while everyone wants to go to heaven, and nobody wants to die, that doesn’t stop the bleeding, death, and outstanding fucking action scenes from taking place. In other words, when you get something cheap online, someone else is paying for your discount. There is always a price for salvation, and it’s often invisible.

Others pay so that we can be saved. Before we go on, be warned: there are some spoilers incoming.

Modern Gods

The film’s villains are Rana and Baba Shakti, with a side order of Queenie. Rana and Baba Shakti embody modern anxieties. Rana’s iron-fisted rule reflects today’s unchecked megacorps, while Baba Shakti’s media manipulation echoes edgelord elites who distort reality. Queenie represents the sociopaths of middle management, exploiting others for personal gaie: she is willing to do anything, for anyone, to be rich and powerful herself. She is just fine with her employees being put in the meat grinder; there are always more workers. Supply is everywhere, but demand is small, and this echoes the world we live in ourselves. With the media full of news of rampant downsizing and eroding work conditions, the film presents us our first choice.

Would we want to work for Queenie in exchange for security? What exactly will Patel’s Kid do for that promotion?

The film takes us to our entrée encounter. Kid faces off against Rana, and gets his ass handed to him as a hat. Rana might be a boorish thug in the hotel, but he didn’t get the seat on that fine upholstered couch my skipping leg day or being incompetent. He beats Kid like a toy drum. Kid barely escapes, but shows us his tenacity, perseverance, and courage. It’s in the movie’s first half we get to see Kid’s potential. Wasted on revenge. Squandered, for sure. 

But we also want him to get that revenge. We’ve now got a thirst for it, and as long as he’s paying, we’re happy to accept the ticket.

Spirituality with a Side of Badassery

The challenge with living in the gutter is you can only see so high. Kid has little clue that Rana serves another, more powerful god: Baba Shakti. Many do better out of the new world order. There is a recently developed temple. A promise for a better political leader. Baba Shakti manipulates the media, twisting truths and shaping public perception. He’s the distillation of edgelord CEO elites who distort reality for their own gain, turning the public’s fears and desires into tools for control. All will be given to the faithful, and best we not look too closely at the people shoved aside. 

It’s these people Kid is rescued by. He winds up in a temple of Ardhanarishvara. This temple shows the two halves of our nature; Shiva and Parvati, male and female, light and dark, destroyer and creator. Kid gets some absolutely brilliant drug therapy here. He sees with clarity what happened in his youth: his mother was killed by Rana, and horrifically so. Baba Shakti is behind it all. And the people really need Hanuman.

The problem is that Hanuman’s been out to lunch for years. At the start of the movie Patel brought in heritage talent: someone who understands the powerful versus the weak, with actor Sharlto Copley. Copley is no stranger to nuance, having kicked it out of the park way back with Blomkamp’s District 9. Instead of being the face of our humanity, this time Copley is instead the movie’s first glimpse of evil. His rendition as a ringmaster and fight fixer is vile in a good way, or good in a vile way. But we’re also shown that these immediate evils are tiny. Inconsequential. Copley’s Tiger isn’t a god. Tiger is down in the muck with the rest of us; his real sin has been keeping Hanuman on a leash.

It’s about this point in the movie we’d expect a wise old sensei to enter stage right and take Kid on a tune-up journey. That doesn’t happen, because Monkey Man is trying to show us that we don’t really seek justice. Or we do, but we want it served alongside spirituality. Where John Wick is a man’s quest for vengeance over the death of his dog, Monkey Man is a man’s quest for vengeance over the death of our society.

Kid’s journey shifts subtly from vengeance to enlightenment during his time at the temple. The community’s support contrasts with the traditional solitary training trope. It shows the importance of collective resistance against tyranny.

It is still a quest for vengeance, though! The fight scenes in this movie are truly wince-worthy. There is a tremendous amount of action, and it’s delivered exceptionally well. The car chases are clever. The runs from the law are nail-biting. The martial arts and gun kata are sublime, some of the best you’ll see. At no point in this movie will you be fucking about on your phone because you’re bored. And it’s with this devotion to the craft of a well-made action movie that Monkey Man presents us with our second choice.

Do we want justice and revenge? Or, do we want to make a difference?

See, it’s swapping the sensei for community that presents us with our peek into a new way of thinking. Kid isn’t trained by a Jedi master. He already knows how to fight, but he’s been fighting to lose. Not just because he’s been throwing fights in the ring, but because there’s no new gold at the end of the rainbow. There’s no answer to, “What’s next?” once he kills Rana.

The temple gives him that answer. The film’s vibrancy isn’t limited to its use of colour. It’s the community that’s welcomed him in. First, a drummer who uses tempo and beat to showcase balance in male and female; the strength in speed and the speed in strength as Kid works the heavy bag. A woman of the temple joins his training to provide a counterpoint to his monk-like focus – sometimes it’s enough to simply hit the bag. And Alpha, Kid’s rescuer, nods in approval that the youth is recognising others outside himself, and allowing himself to be the student, so as to become the master. It’s a touchpoint back to Ardhanarishvara, where we need both light and dark to overthrow the gods, but we also need each other.

Action and Consequence

There’s a movie Monkey Man reminds me of, and it’s not John Wick. It’s 2021’s Kate. The titular Kate is a stranger in a strange land; she’s pulling in hits for the Yak until one day, bad shit happens, and she’s got the standard issue 24 hours to square said shit away. Kate is a brutal, often darkly comedic film, but the similarities to Monkey Man don’t end there. Kate shows us that even when we win, there might not be a way out.

And Monkey Man’s Kid follows Kate down this path, showing that even victory comes with a heavy price. As Kid confronts and exposes the gods’ vulnerabilities, he faces his own sacrifices. The film illustrates that true heroism involves acknowledging the cost of our actions and the price paid by others for our gain. He is helped by the people he’s helped, and delivers justice on all counts. But he’s cut the gods. He’s made them bleed. A god’s wound is a reminder to the fragility of power, but not that power’s easy to overthrow. The gods are not unbeatable, and that includes Hanuman. Kid’s journey from hustler to Hanuman doesn’t leave him invincible, and this is where the film gives us our third and final choice.

Would we sacrifice it all for a better world? Or, would we be content to take the scraps we’re offered, all while keeping our eyes down?

Flaws

Monkey Man is a great movie, but it’s not without blemishes. For example, the movie’s portrayal of women is questionable. Sita is used as a prop to drive motivations for the main character. She has little of her own agency (which is in fact the point), only getting her own mild dusting off toward the end to deal the killing blow in her own tale of justice. Queenie is a female villain but is ultimately robbed of her power by being subservient to both Rana and Baba Shakti. Sita and Queenie lack depth and agency, undercutting the film’s narrative and spiritual themes.

It leaned into the ol’ dream sequence a bit hard at once point in its efforts to showcase a spiritual side that we already understood.

The people Kid helps at the temple make a return in the final punch-up, but arrive in the scene in the most improbable way. I understand the symbolism meant here: the collective resistance against tyranny and manipulation. But it arrives a little late, and in a weird way. While it’s nice that Kid feels a part of something, we learn we all die alone in the end.

So, What?

Monkey Man dares to show what happens when the gods of our modern world falter. It allows us to view our contemporary anxieties through the lens of a high-octane action flick, and asks us questions along the way, daring us to decide if we’re somehow complicit in the world we’ve made. It simplifies the strength of the powerful, be they edgelords or megacorporations, but it’s the simplification that shows how little agency we have in our own lives. It suggests that the media is not asking the right questions, nor looking in the right places. The movie does this all while showing us who really pays for what we enjoy: the weak, the small, and the voiceless.

But it’s this faltering of the gods that gives us hope. We’re not just pawns. We all struggle, and succeed, sometimes alone, but often with each other. Monkey Man dares give us spiritual meaning inside a riotous delight of action. It teases us with how good it feels to throw down the mighty. And while there’s a larger commentary on the struggles we face against the powers shaping our society, it’s still a great hero’s journey, with a start, middle, and end, and all three parts are full of badassery.

Monkey Man challenges us to rethink our role in a world dominated by powerful elites. It’s more than an action-packed thrill ride; it’s a reflection on power, sacrifice, and the strength found in unity. The film suggests that while we may struggle against these modern gods, there’s hope in recognising and reclaiming our own power. Monkey Man gives us a clearer picture of our humanity. It suggests that we have given the gods their power, but ultimately, that we can take it away too. And that, my friends, is a message we all needed to hear.