Monkey Man is a promising, yet disappointing, collage of better action movies

It's something of a miracle that Monkey Man exists.

It's an action-drama made by a lesser-known actor when according to some the traditional leading man andaction hero has already started to disappear from the cultural landscape.A movie held in post-production hell by Netflix for years until being saved by a sympathetic Jordan Peele. And a story so violent and overtly critical of real-life social injustice in India some have speculated it may end up delayed, censored or never releasing in that country at all.

So with nearly everything about Dev Patel's Monkey Man working against it, the fact audiences can actually go see it in theatres this weekend is a testament to the vision, charisma and passion of Patel himself.

Which makes it all the more painful to say that Monkey Man's muddled plot and dizzyingedits left me with the one feeling you don't want from a high-stakes action thriller: disappointment.

With that sad fact out of the way, it's important to acknowledge it is not a terrible film, and Patel (who both wrote and directed the film) is not a bad filmmaker.

In Monkey Man,we follow Kid (Patel) an Indian man scraping by a living as a heel in an underground fighting ring, with the requisitely unappetizing job of being beaten to a bloody pulp in front of a screaming crowd.Kid is manipulated and short-changed by the fighting ring'smanager (Sharlto Copley, showcasingthe grinning-scumbag muscle flexinghe's perfected in everything from Oldboy toHardcore Henry) as he takes those beatings.

And until he eventually breaks off on a journey of drama, vengeance and punching against India's elite, he continues to fight and lose (badly) night after night, while hidden behind an equally beaten up ape mask.

Cross-cultural connections

The mask in question begins as a sort of random creative flourish, but quickly ties directly into Patel's central metaphor: the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, a traditional symbol of devotion, loyalty, service and strength which, Patel has said, has direct parallelsto superheroes in the West, but has also been used as asymbol by the country's current nationalist government.

Patel uses those cross-cultural connections to make some obviously prescient points. Weaving between Kid's necessarily traumatic past and a present-day descent into a criminal and political underworld,Monkey Man does everything it can to hammer the Hanuman-Kid connection home.

At the same time, the lush cinematography and meticulous references to Indian mythology and culture mark Patel as an artist coming into his own. There is a clear vision here both behind and in front of the camera, infusing the world with harsh and realistic vignettes into Mumbai's poverty, inequality and caste system.

Patel's acting, meanwhile, is second to none to be expected from the man who dazzled in The Green Knight. And as he labours to connect the relentlessly self-flagellating Kid with the legend of Hanuman which itself starts out about a misbehaving child burdened by past mistakes, forgetting the power he has to change his own destiny Patel's potential as a storyteller shines through.

Overthinking action

All of this is almost enough to make you forget what you're watching is ultimately asemi-shallow, somewhat amateurish collage of other, better action movies.

The obvious comparison is John Wick one that has been made so many times even Patel is getting tired of referencingit. But where Wick dusted off and resurrected the Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and still-shuffling-along Tom Cruise-typehero by putting its action front and centre, Monkey Man's reach exceeds its grasp.

John Wick uses an admittedly paper-thin plot as an excuse to launch Keanu Reeves on a revenge journey full of non-stop book-kills and pen-stabbing. The point of Wick is not to mine its character for anything beyond an unbridled rage, but instead to set him up for action. Monkey Man, however, tries to balance its gruesome violence with a incisive political critique, cutting between character-driven drama and culture-bridging genre-bender.

It's a balance first-time director Pateldoesn't yet have the chops to land. The long interludes between fights turn Monkey Maninto a plot merely punctuated by action, rather than makingitabout more than the action.

And most of those interludes are justelementscutout of other action movies and pasted in here. There's the scrappy street kid ofGet the Gringo, damsel in distress ofYou Were Never Really Hereand the unfortunately near-universaltrope of a one-dimensional dead woman written only as a motivator for the main character.

Though some of these tropes are solid in their respective source material,Patel hasn't quite mastered the technique of making them work as they should. Theextraneous charactersdeliver their lines like they're filling outan action-thriller checklist, and mostcould've ended up on the cutting room floor without affecting the plot in any way.

Throwing fight scenes at the wall

But even when Patel does go to the mat, there's something missing and vaguely nauseating.Instead of backing up the camera to show his actors' full bodiesas they fight, as established by films likeThe Raid relying on the athleticism of its actors and talent of its choreographers to build visual excitement Monkey Man throws a little bit of everything at the wall to see what sticks.

Here, we whip between blurry fists, legs and blades with all the smoothness and clarity of a cellphone camera in an active washing machine. Other times the camera jolts and zooms along with the kicks and punchesto make the blowsfeel real or even momentarily goes first-person POV like a dark sequel to the GoPro-mounted Hardcore Henry.

Like its lagging middle section and cast of characters that could have benefited from a good culling, it's all part of the same problem. While promising, Monkey Man is a slightly self-indulgent first effort by an otherwise promising creator who maybe should've spent more time focusing on both killing bad guys, and killing his darlings.