Monkey Man review: Dev Patel’s flawed but brilliant revenge movie

Armed with a strong outline and a unique vision, the Academy Award-nominated Londoner, best known for his roles in ­Slumdog Millionaire and Lion, decided he would direct and star in a brutal and occasionally brilliant exercise in classic revenge cinema. And why the heck not?

If you’re going to make yourself the lead in your directorial debut, you may as well shoot for the stars. It was only after Patel received funding that problems began to surface.

For a start, the pandemic stalled proceedings and prevented Patel from shooting on location in India. Later, the production was revived on an Indonesian island where its charismatic chief broke his hand while filming the first fight sequence. Somewhere in the middle, they ran out of money. Hardly ideal, but Patel soldiered on.

Eventually, Jordan Peele (Get Out, Nope), who is among the most influential film-makers on the planet, watched an early cut of Patel’s exhilarating action flick. The film was supposed to premiere on Netflix – Peele intervened and helped it secure a well-deserved theatrical release. Someone might eventually back a riveting behind-the-scenes documentary about Patel’s first feature – in the meantime, Monkey Man is ready for its close-up.

Is it as good as the buzz suggests? Not quite. Are we excited to see what Patel does next? Absolutely. As you might expect from a two-hour feature about a dangerous man on a violent mission, there are perhaps one too many creases in the fabric.

The story trips and stumbles in parts, and the action isn’t nearly as tidy as it should be. Despite its imperfections, Monkey Man is an extraordinarily confident picture, and I’d sooner see Patel make a dozen more like it than to lose him to the saggy superhero genre.

​We begin with a vicious brawl. Kid (Patel) makes an unsatisfactory living at a sweaty underground fight club where he suffers humiliating defeats at the hands of better, stronger contenders. He does so while wearing a sweaty gorilla mask – a mandatory requirement, according to the sleazy promoter, Tiger (Sharlto Copley), who fixes the matches and refuses to pay his fighters what they’re owed.

Kid’s lousy martial arts career is put on hold, however, when our watchful protagonist figures out a way to get revenge on the people who killed his mother. If that sounds like a sudden plot swerve, it’s because it is, and Patel’s story – co-written by Paul Angunawela and John Collee – takes a while to explain it.

It finds its rhythm when, after a botched assassination attempt on the crooked cop (Sikandar Kher) who murdered his mum, a battered and broken Kid ends up a fugitive. There are enemies all around, from the powerful businesswoman who made the mistake of giving him a job (Ashwini Kalsekar), to a ruthless political figure who knows a problem when he sees one (Makarand Deshpande). There isn’t a place in India that Kid can hide – or is there? In time, the Monkey Man acquires a group of knowledgeable allies who help him discover his inner champion. Brace yourself for a bonkers denouement.

It seems like a straightforward action yarn with a mysterious hero and a nasty baddie, but really, Monkey Man likes to tie itself up in knots. The narrative – traumatised loner gets his own back on the people who destroyed his life – occasionally slips out of focus, and Patel’s gangly hero eventually makes the leap from spirited underdog to virtually unkillable fighting machine. He is considerably more interesting as the former, but a revenge story about a man who never gets to have his revenge probably wouldn’t work.

The John Wick comparisons are inevitable, and Patel throws in a pointed reference near the beginning. Good for him. Truth be told, there is a lot going on under the surface, and Monkey Man binds complex political themes and socially conscious ideas with breathless set pieces and blood-soaked fistfights.

It’s a more ambitious actioner than most, and though an experienced director might have reined in some of the baggier, messier components, they might also have lacked Patel’s courage and his remarkable determination to excite and entertain his audience.

There is a reason this one ended up on the big screen. A flawed yet rewarding experience.​ Three stars

One Night In Millstreet Now showing; Cert 12A Once upon a time, boxing matches were as arch and self-indulgent as pantomimes, with fighters preening like peacocks and ­promoters pulling any showbiz ruse in the book to build hype. With two superbly flamboyant opponents at its heart, this cracking documentary charts the famous 1995 title bout at the eponymous Cork venue between Chris Eubank and Steve Collins.

The former was the faux-­aristocratic super-middleweight showman who strutted to the intro music of Tina Turner’s ­Simply the Best. The latter was the teak-tough Dublin journeyman who decided to employ his own parlour tricks to take down the ­lethally dangerous champion. All this took place against a new Ireland shaking off the pessimism of the 1980s and embracing Eurovision wins and foreign investment alike.

Writer-director team Andrew Gallimore and Lydia Monin retell the events in a way that is nostalgic, observant and yet able to laugh at the fundamental cabaret of it all. And what a joy to have Collins and Eubank share their intimate recollections, each still visibly moved by memories of a night when boxing reached a cultural zenith on these islands. Four stars Hilary White

The First Omen In cinemas; Cert 16 That tagline will raise a few eyebrows – “The most terrifying movie of the year”? That’s presumptuous. To be fair, The First Omen is surprisingly competent in places and, unlike some other freaky franchise add-ons (The Exorcist: Believer springs to mind), Arkasha Stevenson’s film isn’t a total embarrassment. Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free) is new to Rome and, though she believes her future is with the church, there are all kinds of wicked happenings that begin to test her faith.

The nuns at the orphanage where she teaches have started to act strangely around one of the kids, and poor Margaret is having some rather troubling visions. Throw in a frightened Irish priest (Ralph ­Ineson), a grisly car accident and the impending birth of the antichrist, and you have yourself a proper Roman nightmare.

A silly, bloated prequel to ­Richard Donner’s The Omen, The First Omen is also set in the 1970s and it occasionally looks as if it was made in that decade. At 119 minutes, it perhaps overstays its welcome, and Bill Nighy looks a little lost in the mix, but hey, there are some genuinely unnerving thrills. Approach with extreme caution. Two and a half stars Chris Wasser

Evil does not exist Selected cinemas; Cert 15A The upland village of ­Mizubiki is in the crosshairs of a Tokyo glamping company. It is seeking to build a new nature resort where city folk can unwind among the forests and streams.

At a town briefing, two smiley corporate reps (Ryuji Kosaka and Ayaka Shibutani) are confronted by various concerns and objections from locals. Chief among them is potential contamination to water supplies, something of particular concern to single ­father Takumi (Hitoshi Omika). When his young daughter (Ryo Nishikawa) goes missing, the priorities of the community and those of the developers converge while everyone is scouring the wintry woodlands for her.

Nothing happens in a great hurry in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s spare and spacious eco-fable about a rural way of life being encroached upon by capitalist concerns. This entrancing and quietly enriching film was a darling at festivals around the world last year, with Yoshio Kitagawa’s elegant cinematography and a haunting score by Eiko ­Ishibashi coming in for special praise. Not every viewer, however, may appreciate the slightly thudding note that it concludes with. Four stars Hilary White