A Critical Review of the Interesting Film, “Monkey Man”

I was from the very beginning quite taken with this interesting and rather provocative Indian heroic-action film, “Monkey Man”, especially when the filmmaker and the screenwriter as well as the producer of the film, emphasized the very close and loving relationship between a young boy and eventual a young man and his dearly beloved mother, as we would say in the Caribbean, and particularly also after just having lost my dearly beloved mother, who peacefully passed away on a small-divided Caribbean Island where I have recently returned from. I must say that when I went to see the film, which I did not know very much about, I certainly did not expect, to be fascinated by it to the extent that I increasingly became while watching it unfold, maybe because it was really just an action-revenge movie, and also given the overwhelming destructive emptiness and the utter choreographed predictability of huge numbers of U.S. action films, and ultimately maybe simply equally because I also just wanted to be able to find some measure of entertainment and in the process to become somewhat distracted, given what I am and was fundamentally experiencing and going through.

The interesting and even somewhat politically provocative Indian action film, “Monkey Man” begins with the main character and the inescapable main protagonist of the film, Kid, sometimes also referred to in the film as Bobby, and this intensely haunted and angry character, is being played by the film director, screenwriter and producer of the film, Dev Patel, who became quite well-known and widely celebrated in the north and west some time ago now particularly with the very popular dramatic film, “Slumdog Millionaire” and some other films in which he acted. A poor and highly marginalized Kid, is nearly in all scenes of the rather intensely and at times even brutally violent action film with very few exceptions. We first see him wearing a monkey face mask, and getting himself badly beaten up in an underground fight club, being run by a cynical and contemptuous white boxing and/or fighting promoter. We then see him as a little boy growing up in rural India and being told about the mythical Indian religious and iconic story of Hunaman by his strong, wise and wonderful mother, and he clearly listens to her with utter interest and profound fascination. It is important to point out here that Hunaman is the story of an ancient fallen monkey God, who represents both strength and courage, and which is obviously also what action heroes are all about.
Still, what ultimately makes “Monkey Man” so much more special and equally so much more interesting, as an action-revenge movie, in comparison with so many of the other action U.S. flicks, is the very fact that the British-Indian writer, director, producer and star of the film, Dev Patel, is so very boldly willing to ground his provocative coming-of-age Indian action-revenge film and its sad and angry heroic story-line, firmly in Asian action styles with clear references to various East Asian martial arts movies (e.g. Bruce Lee) as well as by strongly basing it on the very rich history of iconic Indian folklore (e.g. Hunaman), Indian religion as well as on the dynamically evolving Indian culture in a quickly developing and changing India with a few winners in it and also with many losers. Using and referring in the film to Indian folklore in different ways and at different times, gives the interesting coming-of-age action film, also an intriguing recurring Magical Realism quality to it. In so doing, the young Indian screenwriter, director, producer and also the star of the film, “Monkey Man”, greatly helps to indigenize and therefore equally to much more locally and creatively ground the action film genre in India in the process.

The action film, which goes back to the early silent era in the United States, and beginning with Edward Poter’s film, “The Great Train Robbery” (1903). In this historical film context, there was also beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, new types of action films starting to appear in the United States and these different action films, were drawing from various war films, crime films and Westerns, and they were also, in so doing, laying the foundation for the big action and action-adventure films of the 1980s and 1990s. Nonetheless, the Indian film, “Monkey Man”, also still clearly shows particularly in its chase scenes and in some of its fight scenes, the influence of U.S. action films as well, but the Indian director, screenwriter, producer and main actor by firmly grounding “Monkey Man”, in the rich Indian folklore, in Indian religion, an Indian setting as well as in Indian culture, and as a result, all of these various elements combined can equally nicely serve to once again renew and to reinvigorate the now largely exhausted action genre in interesting ways going forward. The quite interesting and provocative screenplay of the heroic action-revenge film, given the existing challenging and also the oftentimes ugly political realities, in an at present quickly-developing India, was jointly written by Dev Patel, Paul Angunawela and John Collee, based on the story by Dev Patel. At the very same time, it still needs to be emphasized here that there is also an ongoing sense at work within the interesting film of the young director, screenwriter, producer and main actor, of him wanting to say or at least to refer to so many different things, going on in India at this moment in time, which clearly upsets as well as fascinates him, but the beginning director, still not being able to find the complete right filmic way, to be able to do so and to find the right balance between all of these different visual, story, screenwriting, mythological, religious, political, class, sexual, gender, ethnic, geographical in terms of the growing urban-rural divide, directing, editing and also the various action elements in his very first film, which is not at all very surprising. The very fact that Dev Patel, who was raised in the Hindu faith, was bold enough even in his very first film, to try and undertake such a hugely complex and a trying multilayered task, is something, which the first-time filmmaker, should be highly commended for attempting to do so, instead of him just ending up by settling on some other largely imitative and rather safe piece of heroic action-revenge works. In this context, this is indeed a very important task that all young and boldly imaginative filmmakers, in former northern and western colonies, in a now fundamentally quickly changing world, and this is something, which they should regularly be undertaking at present, in many different highly creative and subversive filmic ways and they should also be doing so in various genres.

Before going on to critically review the Indian action-revenge film, “Monkey Man”, given its specific focus on what is and has been going on in a quickly developing India, I will first touch on the troubling Indian political context at present, and, all of this, in very large country as well as in an ever more significant large country that in the coming forty to fifty years, will more and more clearly start becoming, the most powerful country in the world. India, is a diverse, large and ever more important country where new national elections, are being held right now with a massive and multi-ethnically and multiculturally diverse voting public of 980 million people, as well as enrolled Indians living abroad, who can vote if they choose to do so in the coming weeks in and across India. These national elections, which everyone predicts the sitting Indian Prime Minister (PM) since 2014, Narendra Modi, of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will win. Nevertheless, PM Modi’s rule of India, has increasingly come to be seen by many as becoming ever more anti-democratic and uglily authoritarian. It has led more and more to the undermining of the free press, the censorship of culture, the weakening of the judiciary, the suppression of the political opposition in many different ways as well as to the very highly problematic, in a fundamentally very diverse multi-ethnic and multicultural India, of the ongoing as well as of the increasing discrimination and the intensifying marginalization of both the Adivasis (the diverse indigenous peoples of India), who together make up over 104 million people in India, and also of the Indian Muslim population, which is about 200 million strong, in an overall Indian population in a country, which now has the most people in the world of over 1.4 billion people, and, in so doing, recently surpassing the neighboring China. The rampant and ongoing Islamophobia built into Prime Minister Modi’s and the BJP’s present-day and the heavily divisive Hindu nationalist rule of India, can clearly be observed in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which excludes Muslims from being able to obtain a fast track to Indian citizenship. The CAA at the very same time allows many other religious groups, including the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Sikhs and also the Christians, to speed up their attempts at naturalization and therefore on becoming Indian citizens. The founding fathers of India, in 1947, including Mahatma Gandhi, who for decades had fought against the plundering British racist colonialism, would be in horrific shock about all of this ugly racist Hindu nationalism, happening in a deeply multi-ethnic and multicultural Indian country. As a result, and this also very important in regards to what the provocative Indian action-revenge film, “Monkey Man”, is at least trying to do on some level, in this context, and equally to the very contrary of, Bollywood (“India’s Hollywood”), which has been busily releasing many different types of films, strongly supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and the BJP’s divisive and highly discriminatory polarizing Hindu nationalist socio-economic and political agenda. Still, that is also why there is a burning political question now, if the Indian action film, “Monkey Man”, will be able to be seen as it is construed at present, and even though, it has already seemingly undergone some minor changes because of the increasing censorship-drive of Indian culture and also of very diverse cultural products being presented, in Modi’s increasingly anti-democratic Hindu-nationalist rule in India at present, or will “Monkey Man”, as a direct result of all of this, be even much more gutted and deeply changed before it will be able to be seen in cinemas in India in the coming times. I must emphatically put out a spoiler alert here for anyone wanting to go and see the film, “Monkey Man”, which is still in U.S. theaters and I would strongly encourage anyone to go and see it, although for how much longer the Indian action-revenge film will be in theaters, is the crucial question at this point in time. Still, this spoiler alert, is especially because I will be going in some critical depth and important detail about the rather provocative and quite interesting coming-of-age Indian action-revenge film, its main conflict(s) and its themes, its various characters and their various relationships in the following.

The action film, set in India, “Monkey Man” opens on a scene of pure brutal action with a character with a monkey and/or a gorilla mask on his face, being very badly abused and beaten-up time and again by his more popular opponent under the eager eyes of the highly marginalized and aggressive Indian fight fans, looking at the fight with the fanatical white promoter, standing beside of the ring, cheering on the brutal fighting action, and also constantly loudly calling for even much more violence to constantly be meted out in the ring. The white fight promoter does so because he is convinced that this is exactly what the marginalized, desperate, and frustrated Indian fight fans want to see happening in the ring. The very fact that Kid, has on a monkey mask, is quite telling in that it indicates right away that poor and marginalized people like himself, are considered to be nothing really much more than superfluous “animals”, in the on many different levels quickly changing, violently modernizing and industrially developing Indian society and country. In this context, we right away sense how very tough life is in this society for many of its people, and we see this being confirmed after the fight when we see the main character, Kid, taking off his monkey mask and clearly showing signs on his haunted and angry face of the vicious pounding, he has taken during the merciless fight in the ring. We also see another sign of this for the very first time in the very fact that his right hand, is also very badly messed up and it is also extensively scarred for some reason. The Indian action film cuts away to show us the main character, Kid, as a curious and happy young boy, in rural India playing with his beloved mother, who hides behind of a tree trunk with big roots from him, suggesting how for a very long time, deeply interconnected human life has been and still is, in that rural Indian location with nature. We see his dear mother subsequently washing his same hand, but now the happy young boy’s right hand, in the sparkling clean river water, and which at that time shows no signs whatsoever of injuries as well as of any scars. This is the first place where the film is rather weak and incomplete in that it never shows us anything more about his happy young life in rural India. It could have in a few scenes also shown us the various communal solidarities at work in the small poor rural Indian village near the forest, and where people help one another without expecting anything in return, which would then nicely strongly contrast with the much more atomized, commercialized and competitive individualism, inherent in Indian urban life, in the invented big neoliberal Indian city, Yatana, which stands in the film for Mumbai. When the film cuts back to him in the fight club, after his brutal beating in the ring, we see a deeply bruised and haunted Kid, demanding his money from the contemptuously aggressive British speaking fight promoter, Tiger, who only gives him some of what he was expecting to receive after the brutal beating he had taken, and Kid tells him that he really needs the money. The white promoter, speaking with a British accent, powerfully played in a very small role by the impressive South African actor, Sharlto Copley, as a deeply cynically manipulative and also at times as a fundamentally racist and a cold selfish person, while putting away the money he has made in promoting the extremely violent fights in his locker. Tiger arrogantly informs Kid that if he wants more money the next time around that he will then have to be willing to give even much more of himself in the ring. One simply wonders how Kid would be able to do so without getting himself either badly injured and/or killed in the ring, but the promoter simply does not care.

From very early on we therefore come to see that in the huge city, Yatana, with its bright lights and endless tall sky scrapers, has a much darker edge to it, and that ultimately in the huge Indian city, everything depends on money and everyone (including even small and young kids) in one way or the other, is constantly hustling to get their hands on some money, and to hell with the consequences. This is because if you do not have any money, you are going to live a very hard anonymous “life in hell”, in the large modern and modernizing Indian city. We see this in the shot in the early chase scenes in the streets in the large and modernizing city while Kid and Alphonso are desperately trying to get away from the aggressive cops in their various modern vehicles flying past the very poor people sleeping on the side of the streets. In this context, the coldly uncaring racist and the cynically calculating fight promoter, Tiger, with a British accent, stands in for the ongoing brutally dehumanizing life of and for many in the quickly transforming and mercilessly modernizing Indian city as well as for the ongoing horrific consequences of the violently plundering British colonial rule in India until 1947, and going back to the 18th century, where it all began. It is estimated that the violently plundering racist British colonialism had cost India about $45 trillion, and the real number in regards to the collective violent British colonial damage done to India, is quite likely even much larger than that already rather huge number. Still this $45 trillion, which was a great benefit to a developing and equally to an industrializing Great Britain during those times, is about fifteen times (15x) the size of the present-day economy (GDP) of the United Kingdom. In other words, this would mean that the United Kingdom, in terms of reparation payments and this only portends to India, would have to send to India fifteen years of the entire existing British GDP, and to do so without taking a cent for themselves to do anything whatsoever!! Next, after getting some money from his brutal fight in the underground fight club, we see Kid, who clearly has something very important on his mind, handing some of the money, to various young kids in order for them to help him obtain a revolver as well as much more information and a phone, which is stolen from the powerful female owner of what we will quickly come to understand and to see, is an elite upscale Yatana entertainment, restaurant and prostitution club, called ‘Kings’, a clearly quite ironic name. ‘Kings’ is being run by a strong regularly foul-mouthed and hands-on Indian business woman and madam, Queenie Kapoor, impressively being played by Ashwini Kalsekar, who does not fool around with anyone.

Queenie Shapoor plays a strong independent modern urban Indian woman, in a still deeply sexist and fundamentally patriarchal Indian society, and maybe therefore, she is someone who is quite hands-on in all aspects of her various business dealings and she takes great control of what she is doing. Very early on in the film, we see her toughness and her rather cool business manner when a young prostitute, her name is Sita, comes and tells Queenie that she has a STD, and she tells the upset young prostitute not to worry about it and that the doctor they are working with, will take care of her as soon as he returns from abroad. In other words, ‘Kings’, is a special elite place where the violently uncaring, increasingly greedy, extremely narcistic, corrupt, and important neoliberal Yatana businessmen, the vicious police chief, who had sexually abused and murdered Kid’s loving mother, and therefore, Kid absolutely wants to kill him and also some others in revenge. They subsequently had destroyed the rural village in order to use the territory for new industries on the orders of the ever more powerful and influential hypocritical religious leader, Baba Shakti (shakti means ‘power’ in Hindu), and this was the same poor and isolated rural village where he had lived with his mother as a happy young boy. In this context, the leading local political class, equally regularly hangs out in ‘Kings’ while eating expensive food, having fun and also often quite clearly having (unprotected) sex with the upscale prostitutes from all over the world, and therefore these are a diverse group of international women, whom these various elite Indian men, often treat with utter sexist and patriarchal contempt. Again, here is another weakness in the interesting film in that we could have seen these elite people negotiating all types of beneficial deals together with the participation and the corrupt backing of the local politicians and the police chief. It is implicit in the film, but this corrupt and very important cynical elite Indian collaboration, should have been made much more explicit, especially once Kid had launched his enraged failed attack in ‘Kings’ on the police chief early on in the film. We sense that this is indeed exactly what has happened when the media in Yatana, declares them to be “dangerous terrorists” and urgently wanted namely both Kid and his helper, Alphonso, who we have seen first approaching Kid when he gets the job from Queenie Kapoor of working in the kitchen and cleaning up the place after returning her phone.

Alphonso emphatically warns Kid to work hard and to be very careful and remain quiet about anything he observes while working at ‘Kings’. This is where Sita could have played a much more important role in the film by allowing her to use her position at ‘Kings’ in order to tell Kid what was going on there, and also what the violently corrupt and uncaring Indian elites, were planning to do with him. It would have afforded her much more independent and consciously resistant agency in the film as one of the only women in the film to be able to do so. Early on in the film, Sita, is the one who tells Kid when she senses that what is going on in ‘Kings’, somewhat upsets him, in one way or the other, although she is not sure why this is the case, and she tells him that if he could not deal with it, he should move on. Clearly, this shows that Sita has no illusions about the very difficult position most ambitious young Indian women, find themselves strongly trapped into, in a still deeply sexist and fundamentally patriarchal Indian society. Still, Alphonso, played with an interesting limp by the Indian actor, Pitobash, is another ordinary highly vulnerable and desperately marginalized hustler in the big city, Yatana, who works as a low-level enforcer in ‘Kings’, and he also buys drugs on the side for the corrupt and spoiled Indian elite classes, to be able to indulge in when they are at the elite club. Obviously, the various Indian elite classes feel that the laws and the rules do not apply to them and therefore they can do whatever they want to and also whenever they want to do so. We ultimately see this elite collaboration in a very impressive set of shots of a lonely and of an equally very scared Alphonso by himself, in the large and fundamentally atomized alienating city, Yatana, starting to understand when viewing a picture of himself on a television screen being described as a “wanted terrorist” by the authorities of the highly problematical situation, he has put himself into by helping Kid to escape after his enraged first failed attack on his enemies at the upscale entertainment, restaurant and prostitution club, ‘Kings’ in Yatana. Alphonso subsequently simply disappears from the film and again this is a powerful metaphor of how very cheap life is and how cheap it has become for so many poor and marginalized Indian people, in the large modernizing commercial Indian city, and also in the quickly changing and developing neoliberal India at this point in time. It is important to emphasize in this context that the quickly developing and modernizing India, and the ever more important large country with the most people in the world living in it, still has now over 230 million poor people in its midst and with hundreds of millions of others living in near-poverty, although all of that is certainly also a great leap forward in this regard over the last decade and a half.

We subsequently see Kid being rescued and equally being healed by Alpha, the committed leader of the highly marginalized, somewhat isolated and the discriminated against hijras, who are seen as India’s third-gender community, and they view themselves as being neither male nor female but both at the same time. In the western media, the hijras are oftentimes portrayed as being sex workers but the film, ‘Monkey Man’, on the other hand, respectfully describes the hijras, as just another one of the various oppressed groups and marginalized communities in a quickly changing India under increasingly violent authoritarian and spreading corrupt elite rule. One big problem in this sequence is the fact that while fleeing from his first failed attack on his personal enemies in ‘Kings’, Kid, is shot and he plunges into the highly dirty and polluted river in Yatana, but the film then subversively cuts to a pristine flowing river with sparkling clean water in it in the forests. We never see Kid suffering any negative consequences or side effects, even temporarily from having fallen in the very dirty city water. It would have been powerful to see him being sick for at least a few days, as a consequence and subsequently being taken to a clean river, and washed clean after getting better. This would have been a powerful image that tells us the huge environmental cost the Indians are now paying for their ongoing socio-economic development and also a powerful visual metaphor about what he was trying to do. It would have equally nicely tied in with the fact that he had grown up in a rural village close to nature and clean waters. Still, Alpha, is played with a deep sense of hard-earned wisdom, understanding, and committed solidarity, and quite contrary to Baba Shakti, Alpha explains that he has helped Kid because he sees a lot of his former self in him, in the sense that he also comes from a rather poor and marginalized background as well and he had also faced a great deal of violence. He explains to Kid that the hijras are facing increasing pressure and attacks, in essence, from the fundamentalist Hindu nationalists and other religious leaders and right-wing politicians. We see Kid looking at the old Indian paintings of mythical Indian figures, who are relevant to the identity of the hijras, on the wall of their temple, and we also see him subsequently intensely training himself in various boxing and fighting techniques for his coming revenge undertaking on among others the tall, big, violent, drug-taking and corrupt police chief as well as Kid’s main antagonist in the film, Rana Singh, who is powerfully and intensely convincingly being played by the Indian actor, Sikander Kher. While Kid intensely himself trains in various boxing and fighting techniques with many different hijras looking on and strongly encouraging him, he does so to the surrounding sounds of old traditional Indian music being played for him by a master Indian musician. Again, the first-time filmmaker, in so doing, and by using traditional Indian music in this manner, emphasizes here once again that his action-revenge film, is fundamentally about India, and equally about the very great importance of a quickly changing, developing, and modernizing India, critically recapturing all that is good, useful, and enlightening of its past, in order for it to be able to move forward in much more inclusive, cohesive, fundamentally democratic and socially just fashion.

This is indeed something very important that needs to be done in all of the formerly colonized and even in the still colonized, in one form of the other, countries in the world. In this context, Dev Patel, is certainly not arguing here that a quickly modernizing and developing India, should just take over all of the many different things from its past, uncritically. This is because in all cultures everywhere and also therefore in Indian culture, there are many things, cultural values as well as behavioral traditions in the Indian past, which simply cannot be accepted anymore today. That is exactly where the filmmaker, Dev Patel, quite strongly differs from the current Hindu nationalist Indian PM Narendra Modi and also from the governing BJP as well. We also see this play out in the film, “Monkey Man”, especially in regards to the profoundly hypocritically corrupt religious leader, Baba Shakti, the violent and complicit police chief, Rana Singh and the cynical politician, Adesh Yoshi, the ultra-nationalist right-wing candidate running for office, whom Shakti supports and whom he strongly encourages his followers to vote for by saying that the politician will take care of their needs. A behind-of-the scenes, increasingly powerful and influential, Baba Shakti, contemptuously does so, knowing full well that the politician, will back his socio-economic and political interests once in office. After Kid has left the hijras in order to undertake his violent revenge actions in the large city, Yatana, we eventually see the hijras, surprisingly receiving a significant monetary gift from someone, which we know happens to be Kid, but they do not know that, although they are quite astonished to receive such a significant monetary gift, which again tells us everything about the hijras’ rather precarious and contradictory position in the Indian society as such, and the fact that they are nonetheless equally greatly in need of the money.

“Monkey Man” ends with the from the very beginning of the film rather predictable ultimate heroic action-revenge showdown between Kid and the police chief when we earlier had seen a young boy, Kid, being told by his worried mother to go upstairs, to be very quiet and to hide in their small wooden house from the police attack on the poor rural village close to the woods where he lives with his beloved mother. We subsequently see him seeing his mother being violently sexually assaulted and his mother desperately trying to resist before she is murdered by the brutally corrupt police chief, Rana Singh. Quite interesting, in this context, is the fact that a now lean, strong and well-trained heroic Kid, is helped in his extremely violent action-packed revenge on his various enemies in ‘Kings’, both by Sita, who ends up saving him from an enraged Queenie Kapoor, trying to protect her various highly-sensitive elite business interests tied in with the entertainment in her luxury bordello of the different elite classes, in Yatana, and Sita quickly kills Queenie Kapoor before she can ultimately slaughter Kid. Sita and Kid from very early on have a very strange and distant kind of a mutual attraction and fascination but it never goes any further than that. After a very long back-and-forth brutal and violently action-packed showdown between the main protagonist, Kid and his main antagonist, Rana Singh, and where the hijras show up, which is a quite intriguing to introduce, in an intense and oftentimes hyper-individualistic heroic action-revenge film, and the hijras do so dressed up in their costumes in order to help him in his ongoing great revenge fight against great odds and many violently fanatical opponents. This showing up of the hijras is also something that I will return to in the conclusion. Not surprisingly, Kid finally kills Rana Singh, in a very bloody and in an increasingly widely destroyed elite Yatana “Kings’ bordello, as the various Yatana elite classes flee the violence in horror. I will also come back to this very important point here because it is really one of the most radically subversive images and scenes, in the entire interesting action-revenge film, “Monkey Man”, and it is something which merits much more attention and consideration. Finally, and with the help of dead Queenie Kapoor’s severed thumb, Kid goes upstairs in the elite club in order to deal with the hypocritical religious leader, Baba Singh, who is seen washing his feet in water when Kid walks through a hall filled with the iconic paintings of the Indian past that the corrupt and highly exploitative, Baba Shakti points to as a justification for what he is doing. He tries to convince Kid to forgive him before surprisingly and violently stabbing him while we see through the glass outside, the ongoing celebrations of the election victory of the politician, Adesh Joshi, whom Baba Shakti, had strongly backed earlier in a speech to his loyal followers. The speech given by Baba Shakti to the large mass of his silent followers, is another very interesting and quite provocative aspect of the action film, “Monkey Man”, and this is something that we see playing out on three different levels in a quickly changing and developing India in the film.

It is indeed a quite provocative aspect because it points to the rampant cynical manipulation and really ongoing ‘brainwashing’ of the ordinary and marginalized desperate people in India by the various leaders and Indian elites in Yatana. The very first time we see this cynical manipulation happening, is with the white promoter, Tiger, who is constantly manipulating the fighters to get them to do whatever he wants them to do while at the very same time being flexible enough to use as well as to manipulate the longings and the wishes of the marginalized and desperate Indian fight fans. He does so in order to ultimately maximally benefit himself as the at times deeply racist and at other times profoundly contemptuous white promoter of the brutal fights in his underground club. The next time, we see this widespread continual manipulation and ongoing ‘brainwashing’ of the Indian public, is when Alphonso sees himself while trying to hide from the violent and corrupt police in the large city, being described in the media with a picture of himself on the television, as an urgently ‘wanted dangerous terrorist.’ This is being broadcast while at the very same time ‘the real violent and corrupt Indian elite terrorists’ are having a very good time eating expensive dishes, drinking expensive drinks and having sex with various upscale international prostitutes in the elite and luxury Yatana ‘Kings’ bordello club, and they do so while they are also regularly taking and using all kinds of different (illegal) drugs there. The other time we can see this manipulation and ‘brainwashing’ of the silenced ordinary and marginalized Indian people, is when Baba Shakti calls, in a speech, on the large crowd of his silently listening supporters to back his chosen political candidate. One of the great weaknesses of the Indian action film is that we never hear any ordinary and marginalized Indians protesting and fundamentally questioning this continuing manipulation and ongoing elite propaganda. To a certain extent, only Alpha really to some extent does some of this, but it is left mostly up to Kid, to fundamentally do so through his heroic actions. It is as if at present, the interesting Indian action-revenge film, “Monkey Man”, is insinuating that the diverse Indian people, are facing such a vastly and a powerfully elite organized propaganda system that they cannot really do very much against. Implicit, in all of this, is the fact that the protagonist, Kid, may therefore be able to exact some measure of revenge for what has happened to his mother and even to himself personally, but he will also not be able to achieve very much beyond that.

Nevertheless, again, after another violent fight and an intense back-and-forth confrontation upstairs in ‘Kings’, Kid, ends up killing the so-called hypocritical Indian religious leader, Baba Shakti, who has been gaining more and more power and influence during the film and who also himself had come from highly marginalized socio-economic circumstances, but the utter limitations of the actions of the action hero, Kid, is at the very same time clearly being shown by the ongoing celebrations outside of the victory of Adesh Joshi, the politician that the now dead religious leader had strongly backed. In this context, the complete destruction of ‘Kings’ during Kid’s action-revenge undertaking against his various elite Indian enemies, having fun there, is a powerful sign of the very fact that in order to save India’s moral as well as its political soul, and equally to get the large and increasingly important and developing country, back on the right track going forward once again, massive and incisive structural changes and reforms, would have to be made to the way things are going now and being done now in the quickly modernizing and developing right-wing Hindu nationalist dominated and ever more important southeast Asian country. In other words, the killing of a violently corrupt drug-taking police chief, Rana Singh, the enraged female owner of a local elite entertainment and prostitution club, Queenie Kapoor, in the end desperately trying to protect her quite sensitive Yatana business interests given her elite clientele as well as a hypocritical and emptily manipulative and violently exploitative religious leader, Baba Shakti, and some others, will ultimately not do anything very meaningful and utterly necessary in order to radically change the deeply troubling existing Indian class, caste, gender, sexual, ethnic, religious and deeply troubling power relationships continually at work in the quickly changing society now. All of this ultimately points to the central problem inherent in action, action-revenge and action-adventure films, centered as they are in different ways around the crucial doings of a heroic and mostly a heroic male character, who also most often is somewhat of an introvert and a loner. This is because as a heroic character, he cannot live among the general public as such. He cannot do so because he would become infected and corrupted by the various moral compromises and contradictory actions inherent in living in society. This is something that critical film studies have emphasized for a very long time namely that the crucial heroic figure in action, action-revenge and action-adventure films, results in the population becoming pacified and dependent upon the actions of the hero character, and this is because the public and the people become convinced that the action hero will eventually take care of their problems for them. Once again, it is very important to emphasize the crucial point in this regard, which is that individual actions even undertaken by a so-called heroic action figure, Kid, cannot even begin to solve the complex multilayered socio-economic and political problems in society. Therefore, instead of the people, continually collectively politically organizing themselves and constantly fighting against the myriad injustices (socio-economic, political, policing, gender, race and ethnicity, sexual, legal, environmental etc., etc.), which they are facing in society as such, they instead look towards a heroic figure to do so for them, which is a very bad idea indeed. In other words, there is clearly a quite strong anti-democratic de-mobilizing tendency at work in action films, which maybe explains their popularity in Hollywood and where also Wall Street finance was beginning to play a larger and larger role in the 1980s and the 1990s, and during which time participatory democracy nearly everywhere in the north and west, was continually being rolled back and increasingly constrained under rampant neoliberal capitalism. Therefore, in choosing to tell his important story, in the form of the heroic action-revenge film, it can be argued here that the young and new filmmaker, Dev Patel, in so doing, in the complex filmmaking process, was and is in many ways, in essence, also contradicting himself and his very provocative message and incisive questioning about what is going on India, at present, under the highly problematic and increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian rule of the Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And, all of this, can certainly be said regardless of the already above-indicated limitations of the intriguing action-revenge film.

The one exception we come to see in this regard in “Monkey Man”, is the participation of the hijras in the actions of Kid in ‘Kings’, but again there is no follow up to all of this after he has exacted his violent personal revenge on all those involved in his mother’s killing and also in the destruction of the rural village where he was once a happy young boy with his beloved mother. We absolutely do not see a clearly very liberal and rather open-minded Indian, Kid, subsequently going to the hijras, and telling them that he was going to back and help them in their struggle against their ongoing discrimination and exclusion in the Hindu nationalist dominated Indian society, which would have been the very least, he could have done in order to thank them for their important and crucial help in his brutal action-packed and violently destructive fight against his most important antagonists in the film.

©Gregory Gilbert Gumbs