From low budgets to shattered iPhone screens to a ban on its target audience, “Monkey Man” is stronger for its jugaad (scrappy resourcefulness) and amateur newness.
As Harry Styles would say, my favorite thing about Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” is that it is a movie that feels like a movie… a real-go-to-the-theater film. And apparently, I wasn’t alone in feeling this for “Monkey Man.” After a tumultuous start in the gears of bankrupt Bron Studios, award-winning filmmaker and comedian Jordan Peele, along with Universal Studios, saw the film’s potential and believed that it was destined for the big screen. And after a first watch, it’s easy to see why. Veteran actor and pop culture icon Dev Patel sought to arrive onto the directorial scene with this John Wick-esque film and boy did he arrive with a bang — or, more fittingly, a punch.
Before going into the cinematography and thematic wonder of “Monkey Man,” it is important to understand how the film came to be. Before Peele picked it up, Netflix bought “Monkey Man” for $30 million upon seeing Dev Patel’s script. However, when the script ended up with a darker, messier inflection than expected, Netflix ended up dropping it and Bron bought its rights.
Under Bron Studios, “Monkey Man” was plagued by budget cuts and the COVID-19 pandemic. While you would expect Bron’s bankruptcy to be the nail in the coffin for “Monkey Man,” Patel persevered, filming many scenes through an iPhone 15 camera after the crew could no longer afford filming equipment (Indians — we won’t do it first, but we’ll definitely do it cheapest). Patel even continued filming with a broken hand and arm. It’s this ever-changing history of studios, budgets and scripts that forced Patel to be relentless and gave “Monkey Man” its gritty charm. The film’s choppiness gives it space to breathe as something new and free.
This is evident in the bold and unapologetic message Patel chooses to herald. Set in the fictional Indian city of Yatana, which was loosely based on the social disparity of Mumbai, India, the film follows Kid (Patel), an underground, scrappy boxer seeking to avenge his mother’s death at the hands of the corrupt, elitist policeman Rana (Sikandar Kher). Kid’s journey takes him everywhere from dive bars to temples to hijra communities (homes to transgender outcasts). Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), the overarching villain, is a man heralded by a religious movement known as Hindutva that consumes India and its government today.
Through long, mise-en-scène outtakes of religious backstory and mythological symbolism, the film brings to the forefront an important message on Indian classism and religious corruption. For example, it likens Rana, one of the antagonists, to Ravan, the Hindu demon, while Kid’s persona takes inspiration from Hanuman, the half-human, half-monkey deity — hence the title.
What is also unique is the kind of Indian person the film chooses to portray, which Patel has said is deliberate: “I haven’t seen someone such as myself expressed in this manner. Normally we’re given the roles of comedic relief: the guy who opens that laptop and hacks the mainframe type of thing.” But this inspired Patel to radically change the narrative that he is often forced to play to one about a violent vigilante — a unique change that is the reason why I was propelled into writing this review.
I watched the film in a way unlike Peele intended it – on my laptop, hunched over in the dark, illegally streaming it through a VPN and 123movies. Why? Well, the film is banned in India. Yep, you read that right. A film made by and starring a man of Indian heritage, set in India, about Indian society, is banned in India — yet another item on the laundry list of obstacles that “Monkey Man” faced. This one comes from the Indian government, a force that embodies Hindutva, the ideology the movie chooses to condemn. Ironically, this makes the film’s power even more evident, as it has a resilience that makes the establishment afraid of its voice.
And in my eyes, that’s what it means to be Indian now. That’s what the spirit of Gen-Z jugaad is: frugality, change and innovation. The film has been criticized for its sharp, unceasing barrage of action sequences and uneven pacing thanks to the one-take action scenes noticeably shot on an iPhone. This untraditional recording makes the film stand out in a landscape of surface-level South Asian media.
It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s Indian, and that’s what matters.
Anandita Agarwal is a first-year in the School of Foreign Service. Spilling The Chai will appear online and in print every other week.