Movie Review – Monkey Man

I think the first John Wick represents the very best this genre has to offer. Monkey Man follows the path of revenge storyline of John Wick fairly closely.

Acting

Unsurprisingly, the acting in Monkey Man is top-notch. Dev Patel is excellent, and the supporting cast all the way around is pretty good. The villains are properly despicable in their smug righteousness. Much of that is expressed not through dialog but through appearance and expressions.

Action

While the action wasn’t bad, it’s not the best the genre has to offer. There were scenes where stunt men were too early on their marks and reacted to punches before they were thrown. Overall, the action choreography left a little to be desired. My biggest grip about the action was the motivation behind some of the scenes. One in particular, where Monkey Man is being chased by the police and runs into a brothel to get away. He ends up in a fight to the death scene with the guard from the brothel. There’s just no motivation behind that. It was more of a, let’s have a fight for the sake of padding the runtime and giving Monkey Man a reason to go off the top of the building and into a river.

If there was one unrealistic thing that happened in the movie it’s that Monkey Man survived being in that sewage-filled river with all the wounds he had. There isn’t enough antibiotics in the world to save someone from that. Plus, the fight scene in the brothel was a little over the top even or this movie. That’s why I included it as an Alert Peetime.

Motivation

Like John Wick, the Monkey Man’s motivation is clear and compelling—avenging his mother’s murder. I wish we saw more of Monkey Man’s backstory. We are left with only the flashbacks to his childhood, when his mother was alive, and the present day. But we have to fill in the gaps in between ourselves.

I think what sets this movie apart from many of the others in the genre is the spiritualism and mythology that plays into the plot and character motivation. It is this aspect that motivated me to bump this movie up into the B- range, instead of a C+.

Convenience

What I disliked the most about the movie was the end fight scenes seemed far to convenient. Everything up to this point in the movie felt organic, but after Monkey Man fights off the hoard of security personnel at the end he gets into an elevator and goes directly to the police chief, who is conveniently waiting for him, alone in the VIP lounge. The fight between them is a little too staged for my liking. For instance, Monkey Man has the upper hand at the beginning, but when the police chief fights back and gets Monkey Man on the floor he yells at him to get up and fight. In any realistic situation the police chief would think, This dude almost killed me before, I better not let him get up and fight or I could lose. But it looks better if the villain taunts him.

And then after dispensing with the police chief it’s too convenient for Monkey Man to find the religious leader waiting for him in the penthouse. The dude has a helicopter. He should be long gone. Movie over. So the staging for the final showdown was far to contrived for my liking, but everything up to that was solid.

Grade: B-

About The Peetimes: You won’t go wring with either of these Peetimes. The first and last Peetimes are both montages that are long and easy to summarize. The middle Peetime is a long fight scene that has some graphic violence, even for this movie. Note: Monkey Man is never given a first name. At IMDb his character is “Kid.” I will refer to him as “Dev” in the Peetimes.

There are no extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Monkey Man.

Rated:	(R) Sexual Content/Nudity | Language Throughout | Drug Use | Strong Bloody Violence
Genres:	Action, Thriller
Starring:	Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash
Director:	Dev Patel
Writer(s):	Paul Angunawela, John Collee, Dev Patel
Language:	English
Country:	United States, Canada, Singapore, India

Plot
An anonymous young man unleashes a campaign of vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to systemically victimize the poor and powerless.