You knew that there was trouble in the water the second that it was announced that Jordan Peele was going to be a producer for Dev Patel’s directorial debut in the film ‘Monkey Man.’

Over the last several years, Jordan Peele has gotten critical acclaim for his ability to take race-based social politics and craft them into his films. While this style of filmmaking worked for his debut movie ‘Get Out’ in 2017, Peele has become a one-trick pony trying to replicate the same formula with every passing movie. 

On the flip side, it is easy to put out poor-quality films when no one is allowed to criticize your movie without being publicly charged as a racist.  Dev Patel’s film was marketed as a low-budget John Wick film set in India. Add some Jay-Z music to the trailer and you can convince someone that this is likely a film worth seeing. However, the more that was revealed about the plot of this film, exposes that Universal Pictures is responsible for the biggest bait-and-switch film of 2024.

Patel plays the character of a kid, a young boy who is on a revenge tour after the brutal rape in the killing of his mother. The kid takes up the moniker of Monkey Man as he enters an underground illegal fighting racket. Monkey Man is a reference to the false Hindu god of Hanuman, who is used as a figure of worship by our main character and his mother.

The kid infiltrates the criminal underworld for an opportunity to get close to the man who murdered his mother.  However, after an assassination attempt goes wrong, the kid is on the run from everyone in the city and his only hope for survival is a small group of indigenous transgender warriors who can nurse him and prepare him for the final fight that is to come.

You heard that correctly. Monkey Man is a film that promotes Hinduism as our protagonist is raised in the Arts of Transfu before going up against the final boss. Just like Jordan Peele, Patel uses his film to tell a generic story that gives a platform to talk about the social issues of society.  In this case, Patel focuses on the country of India where the caste system remains in play and the country is accused of mass discrimination against Muslims and transgender people.

Once again we have another film that is a bait and switch that teases you with the idea of a super cool bloody action movie while waterboarding you with a social justice lecture. The beginning of the film tells the story of a man trying to con his way into a criminal organization responsible for human trafficking and sex trafficking of women to powerful Millionaires and billionaires.  

Just when you think you are on the verge of watching a one-man Army go to war against the serious people in his country,  the movie comes to a screeching halt as the film takes a detour to teach its audience a lesson about the hijra community, who are known for being South Asian trans people.

The film loses its style, its pace, and never recovers. Monkey Man becomes a poor man’s Bollywood attempt at a John Wick movie even as far as to showcase our protagonist’s relationship with a dog.

When the film isn’t worshiping false gods. Monkey Man lays the groundwork for a far more entertaining movie that never manages to pull itself off of the ground. The film will throw together some brutal hand-to-hand combat in a gruesome gory fashion along the way, but when you realize that this has been the norm for movies ever since the popularity of John Wick,  you can’t even give the film credit for any kind of originality or substance in the story. 

There’s no sense of meaningful relationships in this movie and the ones that are presented or not given any meat for the audience to bite into. 

Much like Jordan Peele’s movies,  mainstream critics will not be allowed to criticize this movie because by doing so they will be criticizing the protected class status of the group of individuals the film is trying to promote.

But here’s a newsflash for those of you in Hollywood,  trying to infuse Progressive culture into mainstream movies is not a winning strategy because the people within your industry are not even allowed to criticize what you are creating. Monkey Man is the equivalent of a choose-your-adventure set in India, and you pick the worst possible adventure to go on.

Unless you care about monkey demons and international trans communities, this film has nothing to offer you. 

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