Dev Patel wrote, directed, produced, and stars in Monkey Man, a revenge thriller set in a fictionalized Indian city where corruption flows from the top down and the people at the bottom have learned to stop fighting it. Patel plays Kid, a young man who fights in an underground boxing club wearing a gorilla mask, taking beatings for cash while nursing a decades-old grudge against the powerful figures who destroyed his mother and his village. His plan for revenge is slow, methodical, and ultimately messier than he imagined.
The film had a troubled path to release. Originally set up at Netflix, it was eventually picked up by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and released theatrically through Universal in April 2024. The reception was enthusiastic but qualified. Audiences praised Patel’s ambition and physicality while noting the film’s structural unevenness. Comparisons to John Wick were inevitable, though Monkey Man has different things on its mind than pure spectacle.
The Fists and the Fury
The action sequences are where Patel’s vision comes through most clearly. The fight choreography favors impact over elegance, with a scrappy, improvisational quality that reflects Kid’s background as a street fighter rather than a trained assassin. Bones break audibly. Bodies hit surfaces with weight. The violence is unglamorous and painful in a way that keeps the stakes grounded even as the scenarios escalate. A mid-film kitchen fight and the extended climactic sequence are the standout set pieces, choreographed with a creativity that earns the comparisons to The Raid that several viewers have made.
Patel’s physical performance is remarkable. He trained extensively for the role, and the commitment shows in every fight scene. Kid doesn’t move like an action hero. He moves like someone who has learned to absorb punishment and find openings in the chaos. Patel takes hits convincingly, sells exhaustion and injury without overdoing it, and brings an emotional rawness to the physical performance that keeps the violence connected to the character’s pain. This isn’t a movie star playing tough. It’s an actor fully inhabiting a role that demands everything from him.
The social commentary gives the film weight that pure revenge thrillers lack. Monkey Man doesn’t shy away from depicting the caste-based oppression, religious hypocrisy, and political corruption that motivate Kid’s rage. The villains aren’t generic crime lords but specific types of powerful people, a corrupt spiritual leader, a complicit political establishment, a media apparatus that looks the other way. By grounding Kid’s personal vendetta in systemic injustice, the film elevates its revenge plot from simple wish fulfillment into something with actual political teeth.
The incorporation of Hindu mythology, particularly the Hanuman legend, adds a layer of meaning to Kid’s journey that enriches the film for audiences who recognize the references and doesn’t alienate those who don’t. The monkey imagery isn’t just aesthetic. It connects Kid’s transformation to a mythic tradition of righteous fury against unjust power.
The supporting cast brings texture to a world that could easily have been one-dimensional. Vipin Sharma as a compassionate trainer, Sobhita Dhulipala as a woman navigating the corridors of power, and Sharlto Copley in a brief but memorable role all contribute to a sense of lived-in reality.
Where Monkey Man Stumbles
The first act is the film’s weakest stretch. Monkey Man takes roughly forty minutes to establish Kid’s world, his underground fighting career, his infiltration of a luxury hotel, and his backstory before the revenge plot kicks into gear. The pacing during this setup is uneven, with scenes that repeat information and a nonlinear structure that creates confusion rather than intrigue. Several viewers noted that they almost checked out during the first third, only to be pulled back in once the action and emotional stakes locked into place.
The handheld camerawork, while effective at creating immersion and chaos, sometimes works against the action choreography. During certain fight scenes, the camera shakes and cuts fast enough that it’s difficult to track the spatial geography of the fight. The best action cinema maintains clarity even in chaos, and Monkey Man occasionally sacrifices that clarity for a visceral, documentary-like feel. It’s a directorial choice, not an accident, but it frustrates in moments where you want to see what Patel choreographed rather than feel the blur of it.
The script occasionally reaches for thematic depth that the narrative can’t fully support. Monkey Man wants to be a John Wick-style action film, a social commentary on Indian inequality, a mythological allegory, and a personal story about grief and rage, all at once. Most of the time, these threads coexist productively. In a few stretches, they compete with each other, and the film’s emotional momentum stalls while it juggles tones.
The third act, while delivering on the action front, rushes through emotional beats that deserved more time. Kid’s connection with a community of hijra (transgender women) who shelter and train him is one of the film’s most compelling elements, but it feels compressed, as if an entire act’s worth of character development was squeezed into thirty minutes.
A Debut Built on Rage and Purpose
What makes Monkey Man notable beyond its genre pleasures is the sense that it exists because Patel needed to make it. The film carries the energy of a personal project, one that’s been thought about and fought for over years. Its rough edges aren’t the result of carelessness but of a first-time director trying to fit too many ideas into a single film. That ambition is more interesting than polish, and it’s what separates Monkey Man from the dozens of revenge thrillers released each year.
The Hanuman thread gives the film its emotional thesis: that there’s a difference between violence born from cruelty and violence born from the refusal to accept cruelty. Kid isn’t just angry. He’s righteous, and the film earns that righteousness by showing what created it.
Should You Watch Monkey Man?
If you enjoyed The Raid, John Wick, or Oldboy, Monkey Man operates in that space while bringing a cultural specificity and political consciousness those films don’t attempt. Action fans will find plenty to appreciate, and viewers who want their action cinema to have something to say will find even more. Skip it if you need your revenge thrillers to be lean and efficient, or if shaky-cam action choreography is a dealbreaker. Monkey Man is a messy, ambitious, imperfect film that’s more interesting than most polished ones, and it marks Dev Patel as a filmmaker worth watching closely.
The Verdict on Monkey Man
Monkey Man is a debut that swings for the fences and connects more often than it misses. Dev Patel delivers a physical performance that’s impossible to look away from, and his direction shows real instincts for action filmmaking even when the camera gets too close to the chaos. The social commentary and mythological framework elevate a familiar revenge structure into something with genuine substance. The uneven first act and occasional tonal clashes keep it from the top tier of action cinema, but as a statement of intent from a filmmaker with something to prove, Monkey Man lands with force. Patel broke a few knuckles making this film, literally, and that commitment is visible in every frame.