Dev Patel's gaze always gave off an intelligent glow. From his big screen debut in
Slumdog Millionaire
to his beautiful role as a journalist in Aaron Sorkin's series
The Newsroom
,
the British actor of Indian descent and huge dark eyes usually gives peace, calm and intelligence to his children.
Perhaps that is why it is no surprise that, at the age of 32, he made his directorial debut with a good film in favor of the socially marginalized, which he also produces, writes alone and stars in. The surprise, however, comes from another side, that of his genre:
Monkey Man,
his debut film, is a fierce action and martial arts film, based on hand-to-hand combat, dismemberment and backstabbing. .
Patel has returned to the land of his ancestors to create an archetypal work of revenge that, however, is made strong thanks to the creative arsenal in the making of its sequences, and not just the combat ones. That design misery conceived by Danny Boyle in the infamous
Slumdog Millionaire
,
one of the worst Oscars for best film in history, here becomes physical and moral mud around a corrupt police chief, the luxury brothel that It serves as a home for fornication and power, and for the ragged young man who seeks to make amends for the death of his mother, through the most savage of violence. With certain echoes of the Brazilian
City of God
in its creativity, its colors and the handling of the camera through the corners of Bombay,
Monkey Man
is also set in a fighting and gambling den in which the protagonist, who always fights with a monkey mask, he gets a few rupees in exchange for rigging, blood and affliction.
With these things, it is natural that inertia leads to the identification between this film
and the
John Wick saga
,
which in the last decade has revolutionized commercial action and martial arts cinema. Patel even winks at him in a dialogue. But, despite the similarities, which he has, both are separated by the staging and editing of their spectacular fight sequences. Thus, in the four installments of the films starring Keanu Reeves, the choreography of their confrontations is developed through a paradoxically harmonious staging in continuity, with long shots extended in time, accompanied by light or vehement
supporting
tracking shots
. In them the dynamics of its contenders and their movements are visualized with hardly any montage cuts, almost like a classic musical from the fifties in which the dances are replaced by capers of physical destruction.
The action of
Monkey Man
, however, is never composed based on continuity, but rather on rupture. The editing cuts are incessant and go at a breakneck pace; and the shots follow one another without just a second or two passing between them. Patel's handling of cinematographic language, however, is brutal. He has dazzling energy, cadence and expressiveness for a first-time director. Something that is demonstrated, without going any further, with three of the only four ring fights in the footage, each based on a dynamic sense of space and narrative. The first is set in a low angle shot, with the camera from the waist of the opponents or even lower, and a look of overwhelming closeness. The second, with the overhead shot as the main exponent, offering a very different, more poetic and exquisite vision of the fight. And the third, with surprise as the main exponent, raw and concise.
With rough textures, contrasting colors and ocher photography, like the social mud in which many of its characters operate,
Monkey Man
only becomes unbalanced in the second half, when the Hindu deity Hanuman takes over the tragic halo that surrounds the protagonist and , despite granting authenticity regarding its lineage, the visualization is tinged with a bombastic messianic roll of lyrical ambitions that is a bit tired.
Monkey Man
Director
: Dev Patel.
Performers
: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Sobhita Dhuliwala.
Genre
: action. USA, 2024.
Duration
: 121 minutes
Premiere: April 12.
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
Subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
_