Dev Patel Is a Bona Fide Action Star. And a Director, Too.

It feels like Hollywood has never done right by Dev Patel. Ever since he broke out with the one-two punch of Skins and Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire, true star-making roles have largely eluded him. (There are so many things wrong with M. Night Shyamalan’s live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender; Patel’s performance as Prince Zuko isn’t one of them.) As Patel explained to The Guardian in 2021, instead of receiving offers to play a leading man, he would often have to “wait for an Indian role to come by, where [he] could put on a thick accent.” There have been exceptions, of course: David Lowery’s The Green Knight was perhaps most attuned to the actor’s strengths, as he played an upstart knight who sought glory without taking the necessary steps to earn it. It’s worth noting, however, that The Green Knight hailed from A24, not one of the Big Five major studios. As Patel has readily admitted, his experience on The Last Airbender made him wary of committing to another tentpole.

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But if Patel doesn’t trust Hollywood to give him worthy opportunities to flex his muscles as a movie star, well, why not do it himself? This weekend marks the release of Monkey Man, the buzzy new action flick in which Patel wears many hats as its star, director, cowriter, and producer. By his own account, Patel was put through the wringer in his directorial debut: The film wasn’t able to shoot in India as originally planned because of the pandemic; the production ran out of money to the extent that props had to be glued back together between takes; and Patel broke his hand during the first action sequence. Thankfully, all of the hard work has already paid off: Although the flick was originally being set up at Netflix, Jordan Peele acquired the movie under his Monkeypaw Productions banner for a theatrical release. (Trust me when I say: You’ll want to experience this with a crowd.)

Monkey Man is loosely inspired by the legend of Hanuman, a Hindu deity who, in the epic poem Ramayana, leads an army of monkeys against the demon king Ravana. (The story symbolizes defiance against oppression, which ties in nicely to the film.) For Patel’s protagonist, who goes by “Bobby,” tales of Hanuman’s exploits were passed down by his mother during his childhood before their idyllic village in the countryside was burned to the ground by local police. If that wasn’t horrific enough, the police chief, Rana (Sikandar Kher), proceeded to murder Bobby’s mother in a fit of rage, leaving the young boy orphaned.

In the present day, Bobby remains inspired by Hanuman—so much so that he adopts a gorilla mask for underground fighting matches in Mumbai to earn a quick buck. But Bobby has an underlying motive for cutting his teeth as a warrior: He’s seeking to gain employment at the King’s Club, a high-end restaurant-cum-nightclub that caters to Mumbai’s elites, including Rana and the political leader who orchestrated the destruction of Bobby’s village. If all goes according to plan, Bobby will infiltrate the establishment as a lowly worker and avenge his mother’s death.

Naturally, that’s easier said than done. In his initial confrontation with Rana, Bobby bites off more than he can chew, barely surviving the fight and ensuing police chase through the streets of Mumbai. It’s in these scenes, however, where Monkey Man truly announces itself as a martial arts showcase. The camerawork throughout the combat is shaky and frenetic, mirroring a protagonist who is clearly out of his depth. The audience doesn’t know what will happen next because Bobby, you suspect, has no idea, either. (At one point, Bobby is about to execute the timeless action hero cliché of smashing through a window to make a quick exit; he ends up falling flat on his ass.) John Wick has been a frequent point of reference for Monkey Man—the film is even name-dropped in one scene in which Bobby is shopping for weapons on the black market—but the Baba Yaga starts out as a nigh-invincible killing machine, not a novice with a score to settle. Instead, the better comparison is probably something like The Raid or The Night Comes for Us, where the heroes are worn down by waves of adversaries until they can barely stand. You feel the impact of every punch alongside the characters.

But whereas The Raid features wall-to-wall mayhem, Monkey Man essentially boils down to two massive, sustained action set pieces—the rest of the film builds up to these moments by charting how Bobby’s story reflects the violent oppression against minority groups in India. After barely surviving his showdown with Rana, Bobby is taken in by a community of hijra, a “third gender”—members of Hindu society whom Westerners would describe as transgender, intersex, or eunuch—that has been marginalized since the start of British colonial rule. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not well-versed in the nuances of Indian politics, but Patel makes everything easy for the viewer to follow. On the whole, Monkey Man condemns acts of violence in the name of Hindu nationalism—even inserting real news footage of attacks on Indian Muslims to hammer home that none of this is sensationalized—while sympathizing with outsiders of any kind who are persecuted for being their authentic selves.

If Monkey Man has any shortcomings, though, it’s that the film loses some of its hard-earned momentum to recurring childhood flashbacks as Bobby trains with the hijra. There’s no need for a movie like this to flirt with a two-hour running time, even when Patel’s heart is clearly in the right place. (A leaner cut of Monkey Man would either flesh out Bobby’s traumatic past at the beginning of the film or save it for his adrenaline-pumping training montage.) Thankfully, for anyone whose patience starts to wear thin, Monkey Man’s explosive third act more than delivers the goods.

Returning to the King’s Club after his training, Bobby is a more refined warrior, which is reflected in Monkey Man’s fight choreography as it becomes easier to follow. (Patel, in turn, starts favoring longer takes that are incredibly engaging.) Rather than resembling a wild animal clawing its way out of danger, Bobby has learned how to control the chaos around him. I don’t want to give away too much about the on-screen carnage in Monkey Man’s climax; suffice it to say, the movie certainly earns its R rating with an all-out assault of gore. In that respect, Monkey Man embraces a B-movie sensibility—at times, the violence is so over-the-top that you wonder whether Patel blew part of the film’s budget on fake blood. (To be clear: This is a compliment of the highest order.)

All told, Monkey Man has established Patel as not only a bona fide action star—someone who puts his blood, sweat, and tears into every frame—but a filmmaker on the rise. It remains to be seen whether Patel will use this opportunity to pursue more leading-man roles in Hollywood that fit into his wheelhouse or whether he’ll parlay his early success as a director into projects where he can hone his skills in front of and behind the camera, à la Bradley Cooper. Whatever he ends up doing next, don’t expect Patel to pull any punches.