The Monkey Man writer-director-actor positions himself as an alternative to Hollywood’s identikit leading men in his coiled spring of a revenge thriller, writes Yasmin Omar.
Dev Patel grew up in the public eye. Thanks to his teenage roles in Skins (2007-2013) and Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire (2008), we witnessed his slightly awkward transition from gangly boy to assured man. Patel’s coming-of-age led Elle to dub him ‘the patron saint of Glowing Up’ and Thirst Aid Kit to rhapsodise about his ‘caterpillar to butterfly’ transformation. From around 2015 or so, he was hailed as an unlikely sex symbol – ‘unlikely’ because online fan culture disproportionately coronates white actors as the pinnacles of male beauty (consider current ‘internet boyfriends’ Paul Mescal, Jacob Elordi and Timothée Chalamet). Now, with his accomplished directorial debut Monkey Man, Dev Patel is coming to snatch another crown as an unlikely action star.
Monkey Man (2024)
We must, once again, caveat this description to stress Patel’s singularity in the Hollywood ecosystem. Although his new film mostly follows the expected beats of a revenge thriller – with a taciturn lead going on a killing spree to exact retribution for a murdered female relative – what’s unexpected is that Patel is the one firing guns and lodging knives in windpipes. Decades of cinematic conditioning have taught us that action heroes, at least in wide-release American movies, don’t look like him.
During the Monkey Man press tour, Patel has been bombarded with questions about whether he considers his character Bobby to be ‘the South Asian John Wick’. At the Austin premiere, he responded that John Wick ‘is the only real touchpoint’ for American audiences and entreated them to ‘watch some Korean movies’. The prevalence of this (rather mundane) comparison emphasises the paucity of South Asian representation in US action cinema; these reporters are grasping to define Monkey Man by aligning it with something, made by white people, that they already know.
Beyond race, though, Patel is an atypical action star because of his body type. Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, with their bulging, vein-popping frames, were aesthetic anomalies in the Eighties, until, slowly but surely, their muscle-bound physiques became the standard-bearer against which all other Hollywood men were held. These days, actors’ bodies are so hard – and, let’s face it, steroid-enhanced – that they look strong enough to chisel diamonds. Any action-movie publicity campaign worth its salt (or should that be unseasoned chicken breast?) takes pains to showcase the sacrifices the star underwent to achieve his sizable brawn.
True to form, Patel has followed this playbook for Monkey Man, telling Access Hollywood horror stories about ‘eating sweet potato, salmon and lettuce three times a day for nine months’ and his ‘tough’ training regime. Watching the film, it’s evident that he did work out; there’s even a beautifully self-indulgent moment for the filmmaker-star when he takes off his shirt to reveal his trim torso and a crowd of women cheer approvingly. However, there’s still a featherweight-boxer wiriness to Patel, who says he wanted Bobby to be a ‘skinny, shredded underdog’, not someone ‘bursting out’ of his clothes.
Monkey Man (2024)
This decision strengthens Monkey Man’s narrative, because you’re left genuinely wondering if this scrawny-looking guy can vanquish the colossal beefcakes he comes up against. In an industry where Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson have contracts drawn up to limit how badly they’re beaten up in the Fast & the Furious franchise – and allegedly entrust an on-set producer to tally the hits each performer takes to keep the fights fair – it’s refreshing to see an action movie that allows its leading man to appear human. Every Monkey Man bout visibly costs Patel’s character: bruises blossom, his hair strings with sweat and the lactic acid seethes through his wearying muscles.
Monkey Man (2024)
That’s not to say he isn’t a slick fighter. He expertly incapacitates a score of cops, while handcuffed, in the back of a police van; he nimbly dodges the blows of an axe-swinging pimp, then sinks his teeth down, hard, into his nose; he forward-rolls from a comically gargantuan opponent in a boxing ring, and jumps up to dropkick him square in the chest. Bobby’s a brawler, a poverty-stricken striver with something to prove, but there’s an elegance to him. His every movement is clean and exact. Patel, the owner of a black belt in taekwondo, blends a sharp-edged, martial-arts combat style with a certain scrappiness.
Monkey Man’s action centrepiece is a brutal, pulverising spectacle, lurching, blood-soaked, from a bathroom to a brothel, that deepens Bobby’s character. His continuous beating of bad guys with nearby objects – a metal tray, a frying pan, a glitter shoe (by itself, Cinderella-style) – hints that he learnt to fight dirty, on the streets. He’s aware of his physical limitations and overcomes them by using everything at his disposal to win. Bobby is a true underdog. His mandatory training montage sees him barefoot, on the run from the law with nothing left, pummelling a suspended sack of basmati rice like a punchbag. This is an action hero to root for: his victory is not a foregone conclusion.
Monkey Man (2024)
Nothing on Dev Patel’s CV, varied though it is, would suggest that he was gearing up to be an action star. It’s telling that, rather than simply finding such an opportunity as an actor in Hollywood, he had to create one for himself, and spearhead the project as writer, director and producer. With Monkey Man, Patel refuses to be pigeonholed. He proves he can deliver a forceful dramatic performance, and simultaneously choke out a guy with a pull-flush chain. Patel may be an outlier in the action-movie universe but, as we all know, lone rangers make very compelling characters.
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