In the Flesh: Monkey Man

Stylish, visually accomplished, and gratifyingly preoccupied with impact and momentum, Monkey Man is an impressive little action flick with a bracing spine of anti-Hinduvta politics. It shows definite signs of debut feature weakness — overreliance on rapid cuts, needle drops too broad and obvious, a little too much enthusiasm for Dutch angles — but if star and director Dev Patel is a little green in the big chair, his evident love of film and impressive talent more than cover for his fumbles. Patel draws on everything from James Cameron’s True Lies to the first-person ultraviolence of Hardcore Henry and the prop combat of Jackie Chan for his fight choreography, giving the film’s fights a simultaneously classic and adventurous rhythm and visual feel. Patel snaps from riveting long take fistfights to brutally quick close-quarters butchery with equal skill, throwing in Bollywood dress spins for good measure. It’s an exciting mix of influences brought together with real visual flair.

Monkey Man’s colors are rich, earthy, and beautifully graded, cleanly legible in daylight and at night. Its golds are full-bodied, its pinks electric and otherworldly. It’s clear great care was taken by cinematographer Sharone Meir and by the film’s color graders, a rarity worth praising. The lavish neo-traditional costuming of Alpha (Vipin Sharma) and her hijra sisters provides a clear visual counterpoint to the fascist faux-simplicity of Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) and police chief Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher), who with his perfect hair and granite jaw resembles a sort of Hinduvta Superman, a theme that recurs throughout. When Bobby (Patel) finally beats Singh to death, it’s with a sex worker’s sequined heel. The hijra are presented as an alternate societal model to Shakti’s nationalist, Westernized cult, an inclusive and communal incarnation of Hinduism divorced from caste and commerce. It’s a thoughtful and progressive depiction, and one that rightly situates transgender people as both a bulwark against fascism and a target for its mania for control over the individual.

It’s not a groundbreaking film. The script is serviceable, the characters firmly sketched but hardly anything to write home about. Where Monkey Man shines is in its boundless enthusiasm for its genre roots, its belief in the humanity and dignity of trans women, and its gorgeous visuals. It’s a classic model of film rebuilt with good craftsmanship and for the right reasons, and my God can it land a satisfying punch. Patel’s knack for chasing fists with the camera is genuinely impressive, putting us not just in the skin of the film’s protagonist but in each desperate blow he hurls against his stronger, richer enemies. There’s an earnest elemental simplicity to the film that just can’t quit, a truth at its heart too fundamental for mere repetition to hide it: It feels good to watch a beautiful man grab evil by the throat and beat it to death with a shoe.