FILM REVIEW
Review | Monkey Man
Don’t monkey around with this film
I rarely leave a film in the middle, especially at the theater when I have paid good money to see it, but Monkey Man was so horrible to watch I left about an hour in. Dev Patel wrote, directed and stars in this film about an avenging prize fighter.
This action film is set in India and I thought it was going to be a bit of a superhero-type film. It turned out to be a depressing, exceptionally violent, bloody mess of a film-with the obligatory car-chase scene.
The film is an allegorical story of the black monkey, a Hindu fairytale of an avenging monkey who fights the evil residing inside every man. The main character Kid (Dev Patel) avenges his mother’s death and the horrible disfigurement he has endured as a child.
The film explains where this “monkey man” term comes from, in flashbacks of Kid with his mother. But for those of us unfamiliar with India’s history, it left a lot of backstory out, and this viewer confused.
Now as an adult, Kid, goes from one horrible fight to another. He works three jobs, one of which is as a prize fighter. Every night he has the shit beat out of him in the ring. He is broke and starving. The people around him are deplorable. The people who work in the club are deplorable. The…
