Though they have little in common except the setting and Dev Patel as the lead, it’s easy to recognize the stylistic and thematic centrality of Slumdog Millionaire in Patel’s directorial debut. The latter is a classic tale of retribution, while the former was more or less a rags-to-riches story, but both take place in the underworld of Mumbai, with its unsavory characters and grimy attributes, and Patel obviously observed a lot from Danny Boyle’s direction. However, Monkey Man is ostensibly a bloody action flick in the mold of John Wick, with which it shares some technical staff (as well as a scene that references Wick by name) and any number of John Woo movies. It’s also rather long, which means Patel and his co-screenwriters, Paul Angunawala and John Collee, have to sustain the viewer’s curiosity through a lot of extended mayhem, which, regardless how inventively it’s pulled off, needs to be supported by motive and some kind of rationale. In this case, Patel’s character, Bobby, is seeking revenge for the death of his mother when he was a child at the hands of a group of corrupt police who were evicting poor folk from a tract of land a developer, at the behest of an evil religious cult leader, wanted for itself. The trick is to keep the methods Bobby utilizes to reach his goal comprehensible while also justifying the often byzantine fight scenes that are the product of these methods. 

So while the road to satisfaction is paved with ridiculousness, it follows a certain narrative rigor that keeps things lively and interesting, if not totally derivative. Bobby, for instance, earns cash to finance his revenge plot by taking dives in underground bare-knuckle fights for a venal promoter (Sharlto Copley, probably the only actor they considered for the role), and then enlists some street hustler kids to steal a purse from the manager of a ritzy night club where the targeted cops hang out in order to gain the manager’s favor when he returns it and hits her up for a job. I would say that Patel didn’t need to spend as much time on these details as he does, but the fight scenes, at least, provide some background as to why he’s such a deadly combatant when he has to take on multiple attackers kung-fu-style. The gun action, in contrast, feels gratuitous, especially since Patel, who’s become one of the most versatile young actors in movies, went to the trouble of working out to get his body lean and buff, the better to seem like a raw-boned, maniacal fighting machine. 

The sociopolitical subtext is trite and not as affecting as that in Slumdog Millionaire, but it’s obvious Monkey Man was conceived as frivolous—albeit seriously executed—entertainment, so the social ills it highlights are just a vehicle. Still, one wonders if Patel, who is British, could have financed it completely with Indian money given that subtext. It definitely would have required more dedicated music sequences.

The sub-continent-associated characters in Nida Manzoor’s action comedy Polite Society actually live in Britain, but, as in Manzoor’s very funny TV series, We Are Lady Parts, they carry with them the customs and religious sensibilities of their ancestral homeland, a context that Manzoor skewers with gleeful abandon. Though this particular subset of immigrants and their UK-raised children are Muslim, the specificity of faith has no real purchase on the plot. It’s all about tradition that can’t be easily shaken off, and thus the conventional parents of our two protagonists, sisters Ria (Priya Kansara) and Lena (Ritu Arya), would prefer they do the right thing and find nice Muslim boys with which to start families. Ria, however, has dreams of becoming a stunt woman, and enlists Lena to make demo videos of her busting moves that she can post online to sell her brand. Lena herself had enrolled in art school to study painting but suffers a serious failure of self-confidence in her abilities and has gone on hiatus, so she’s susceptible to her mother’s machinations to set her up with a handsome doctor, Salim (Akshay Khanna), whose own mother seems a little too enthusiastic about the match in Ria’s estimation. So as Lena falls more in love with Salim, Ria concocts a plan to extract her from the clutches of matrimony, which she’s convinced Lena wasn’t meant for.

Nothing particularly original there, but Manzoor develops this familar plot line in action movie terms, complete with elaborate fight scenes and far-fetched tumbles down sci-fi adjacent rabbit holes that reminded me of the movies of Jordan Peele, who, as it happens, produced Monkey Man and reportedly had a hand in its direction. In fact, the two movies have more in common than their creators probably imagine, if they even think of each other at all.

Monkey Man, in English and Hindi, now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Polite Society now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Monkey Man home page in Japanese

Polite Society home page in Japanese

Monkey Man photo (c) Universal Studios

Polite Society photo (c) 2022 Focus Features LLC