Monkey Man: A ferociously violent revenge thriller

Monkey Man (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for rape, profanity, drug use, nudity and relentless gore and bloody violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

When George Lucas created Star Wars, he was inspired by the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell, and 1930s and ’40s Hollywood serials.

 

When Kid (Dev Patel, center left) attends a political rally, to observe his opponent in a
public setting, he's dismayed to discovered that his enemy is closely aligned with a
messianic guru who holds dangerous sway over a large chunk of the local population.

Dev Patel was stimulated by the ancient legend of the divine Hindu monkey deity Hanuman — symbol of wisdom, strength, courage, devotion and self-discipline — and hyper-violent Asian action and revenge thrillers such as Oldboy,The Raid, and The Man from Nowhere ... along with a healthy dollop of our very own John Wick series.

Both filmmakers clearly were attentive students.

 

And, just as Lucas’ Star Wars universe also became a pointed parable regarding the oppressive behavior of dictators and autocratic regimes, Patel’s film has an equally relevant subtext that mirrors real-world events.

 

That, however, takes awhile to emerge.

 

Monkey Man has been Patel’s dream project for nearly a decade: one that took much longer than expected to complete, and very nearly went off the rails due to Covid, financing issues, assorted other delays, the star’s broken limbs, and an ill-advised distribution deal that would have seen it vanish into the vast wasteland of straight-to-streaming. Credit Jordan Peele for a last-minute rescue, when he chaperoned the project to the big-screen release it deserves.

 

Because, seriously, John Wick fans are gonna lap this up like soda pop.

 

Patel directed, produced, co-wrote — with Paul Angunawela and John Collee — and stars in this slow-burn action epic, which takes its time building to each of its two lengthy, jaw-dropping displays of bone-crunching, eye-gouging, slicing, dicing, defenestration and every other manner of mano a mano mayhem one could imagine.

 

All of which is choreographed with stunning razzle-dazzle by fight coordinator Brahim Chab and a massive stunt team.

 

But their efforts come later.

 

Following a fleeting, idyllic prologue that focuses on the loving relationship between a young mother and her adolescent son — clearly a flashback, although context isn’t yet clear — the story opens as Kid (Patel) endures another pummeling at an underground fight club. He ekes out a meager living, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask and following the orders of tacky emcee Tiger (Sharlto Copley), to get beaten bloody while losing to more popular opponents.

Gringo: South of the border fiasco

Gringo (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for profanity, violence and sexual content
By Derrick Bang

If the rest of this film were as accomplished as David Oyelowo’s starring performance, it would be far more entertaining.

Who knew Oyelowo could be so adorable and laugh-out-loud hilarious? It’s quite a surprise from the actor who brought such dignity to memorable roles in A United Kingdom, Queen of Katwe and Selma (the latter playing no less than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.).

Harold (David Oyelowo, left) grows increasingly suspicious when his bosses —
Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Elaine (Charlize Theron) — insist on joining him for what
should be a routine visit to their pharmaceutical company's Mexican manufacturing plant.

Clearly, true acting talent knows no genre boundaries.

Alas, Oyelowo is by far the best part of Gringo, which otherwise is a mess. Scripters Matthew Stone and Anthony Tambakis appear to be going for the uneasy blend of crime thriller and dark-dark-dark comedy that was pulled off so brilliantly by 1993’s True Romance, but that’s a hard act to duplicate. That film was scripted by Quentin Tarantino, and — frankly — Stone and Tambakis aren’t fit to clean the keys of his laptop.

The elements are in place here; Stone and Tambakis simply don’t know how to blend the ingredients into a suitably tasty final product. They badly misjudge some character development, overlook some obvious plot twists, and build to a resolution with at least one (perhaps two) deeply unsatisfying outcomes.

Nash Edgerton’s direction doesn’t help; his handling of the film’s tone is all over the map, and he lets co-star Charlize Theron get away with a truly dreadful performance (something I wasn’t aware she was capable of). Edgerton is a former stunt man and director of video shorts with only one prior big-screen feature to his credit — 2008’s so-so The Square — and I can’t help wondering if his presence here has less to do with having paid sufficient dues, and more to do with his relationship to better-known younger brother Joel Edgerton, who also co-stars in this uneven thriller.

In Hollywood, it truly does pay to have friends in high places.

The story is complicated, so get out your notebooks:

Harold Soyinka, an intelligent but naïvely loyal manager at the pharmaceuticals firm Promethium, is blindly unaware that his boss and (supposed) best friend, Richard Rusk (Edgerton), is a rapacious corporate shark who is cheerfully willing to screw anybody in service of further fattening his bank account. Indeed, Richard is screwing company co-owner Elaine Markinson (Theron), a jaw-droppingly crass, vulgar and profane bitch who casually employs sex as a weapon.

Theron’s initial scenes are a perfect example of Nash Edgerton’s poor direction. Her crude, bad-mannered put-downs and liberal F-bombs look and sound contrived, as if Theron isn’t comfortable delivering them, or doesn’t believe in her character ... or something. Whatever the reason, her performance is off-kilter, and remains so; the film never recovers from Elaine’s behavior.

Richard also is sleeping with Harold’s wife, Bonnie (a miscast and badly used Thandie Newton), because ... well, just because. Neither Bonnie nor this sidebar affair is well developed.

The Hollars: Love and (dis)harmony

The Hollars (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Family dysfunction is a longtime cinema staple, and for obvious reasons: We feel much better about our own lives, while vicariously experiencing the calamities others inflict upon themselves.

John (John Krasinski), seeking a way to re-connect with his mother, Sally (Margo
Martindale), impulsively sneaks a contraband breakfast into her hospital room one
morning: pretzels and ice cream.

But walking the fine line between reasonable character flaws and exaggerated burlesque is a fine art; the personalities in question must remain credible — at least to some degree — if we’re to sympathize, and therefore consent to any lessons the writer may have concealed within the anguish.

Scripter Jim Strouse manages pretty well, with The Hollars. His chaotic family study is both sweetly amusing and, at times, embarrassingly intimate. The latter derives from the fine work, all around, delivered by a top-notch ensemble cast led by the indomitable Margo Martindale.

The film is something of a personal project for John Krasinski, who directs, co-produced and also co-stars. It’s easy to see what drew him to this material, as Strouse includes some perceptive truths — and uncomfortably accurate interpersonal dynamics — amid this serio-comic study of a family in distress.

John Hollar (Krasinski) left his middle-American small town years ago, to seek his fortune in New York City. He lucked into a devoted — if somewhat insecure — girlfriend, Rebecca (Anna Kendrick); they’re expecting a baby, but remain unmarried. This failure to commit apparently derives from John’s dissatisfaction with a drone-like job endured while he attempts to establish a career as a writer/artist of graphic novels: a dream that just ... isn’t ... happening.

He’s summoned back home by the news that his mother, Sally (Martindale), has been hospitalized with a particularly nasty brain tumor. We get a sense that John, although inherently kind and sensitive, has semi-estranged himself from a tempestuous family environment; he returns to find that the flawed dynamic has blossomed into full-blown crisis and chaos.

His father, Don (Richard Jenkins), is inches away from losing the business he spent a lifetime building, his entire staff unwilling to continue until they’re paid several weeks’ back wages. Don also is hit the hardest by this medical crisis, literally crumbling before everybody’s eyes.

Chappie: Too many nuts, not enough bolts

Chappie (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, gore and constant profanity
By Derrick Bang

The best part about Chappie is the title character: not the robot per se, but the marvelous motion-control “performance” given by Sharlto Copley, which was built into a CGI character by the film’s video effects wizards.

Once Chappie falls in with rather evil companions, his "maker" Deon (Dev Patel) tries to
share some important moral imperatives ... such as Thou Shalt Not Kill. But while this
suddenly sentient robot understands the notion of conscience, his "monkey see, monkey do"
tendencies often yield less than ideal results.

We never see Copley on screen, of course, and there’s certainly no way that he could be concealed within this robot’s streamlined mechanical form ... but the actor grants this character a personality, awareness and sense of presence that evoke the similarly brilliant manner in which Andy Serkis brought Gollum to life, in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films.

I only wish that director Neill Blomkamp’s film were the equal of its star.

The South African-born Blomkamp burst on the cinematic scene with 2009’s stunning District 9, a thoughtful sci-fi parable that explored racism, class divides and political skullduggery, while simultaneously building to a rip-roaring climax: a neat trick in all respects.

But Blomkamp has recycled many of the same story elements in subsequent projects, to diminishing returns. Its much bigger budget notwithstanding, 2013’s Elysium played the same narrative card: the violent efforts of an oppressed underclass to rebel against a harsh and long-established social order, with the catalyst being a lone individual who undergoes a spiritual and even physical transformation.

And here we are at Chappie, Blomkamp’s third sci-fi epic, and — as in District 9 — our central character once again is an innocent forced to adapt to horrific circumstances, while unwittingly becoming the face of social upheaval.

This time, though, Blomkamp and co-scripter Terri Tatchell have compounded the sense of déjà vu by borrowing heavily from previous cinema sci-fi. The result too frequently feels like a clumsy blend of Robocop (the 1987 original) and Australian director George Miller’s savage, post-apocalyptic Mad Max series, stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster.

Along with elements that have become Blomkamp clichés after only three films, most particularly the testosterone-enraged, alpha-male villain who comes after our hero with bigger, badder hardware: David James’ Koobus, in District 9; Copley’s Kruger, in Elysium; and now Hugh Jackman’s Vincent Moore, in Chappie. They’re all the same character: unhinged psychopathic thugs. Been there, grimaced at that.

Elysium: District 10?

Elysium (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, gore and strong bloody violence
By Derrick Bang

Based on the evidence thus far, filmmaker Neill Blomkamp has only one story to tell.

Elysium feels much like his previous film, District 9, writ larger: another saga of oppressed “aliens” seeking a way to rebel against their cruel and privileged overlords. The setting and opposing teams have changed slightly, and Blomkamp clearly has a bigger budget this time at bat, but the key plot points are essentially the same; even the hardware and weaponry look familiar.

His impulsive plans having failed yet again, Max (Matt Damon) finds himself trapped on
a medical table, while the coldly arrogant Delacourt (Jodie Foster) orders some
purloined computer data stripped from his brain ... not at all bothered by the fact that
this process will kill him.

That said, political oppression has been a big-screen sci-fi staple going all the way back to 1927’s Metropolis, and it often produces great drama. So we can forgive Blomkamp the familiarity ... this time. (He would be wise, however, to move in a different direction henceforth.)

The South African-born filmmaker has a solid eye and ear for social strife — no surprise, given his homeland — which contributed, in great part, to the narrative power of District 9. Now embraced by the seductive lure of Hollywood, Blomkamp has turned his disapproving eye on the United States, and its dysfunctional immigration policy; the results aren’t likely to be embraced by red staters.

The year is 2154, and the entire Earth has become an environmental wasteland, ruined by industrial excess, land mismanagement, resource depletion and various other unchecked global horrors we currently practice, with no eye toward future consequences. Every country, in turn, has become part of a planetwide ghetto, the 99 percent left to scrabble and squabble among themselves.

But not entirely. Movement and behavior are monitored by android peacekeepers that employ computer-chip tracking to maintain a veritable police state bereft of basic human decency. And humor: Just as it isn’t smart, in our here and now, to crack wise when stopped by a traffic cop, it is sheer folly to act smug with one of these gun-toting “law officers.”

George Orwell’s influence weighs heavily, and his vision has come to pass: Big Brother really is watching, and doing so from a massive orbiting space station dubbed Elysium, where the very wealthy have fled in order to enjoy a life of pleasure and privilege among lush gardens and sparkling architecture. Automated med-bays can repair, reconstruct or eradicate anything, from broken bones to cancer.

Blomkamp knows his science-fiction, Elysium being a verdant cross between the domed forests of 1972’s Silent Running, and the technological wonders of Larry Niven’s Ringworld novels.

District 9: An enthusiastic 10

District 9 (2009) • View trailer for District 9
Five stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, violence and gobs o' gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.21.09
Buy DVD: District 9• Buy Blu-Ray: District 9 [Blu-ray]

This one has it all.

Part scathing social commentary, part eye-popping speculative fiction, part kick-ass action flick, South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp's District 9 is a ferociously engaging film: the sort of impressively original work that shapes popular entertainment for years to come.

Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley, left), assigned to serve "eviction
notices" to the unappealing aliens that have been crammed into a slum for 20
years, naively believes that the "virtue" of his task will be enough to ensure
his safety while within the fenced compound known as District 9.

Blomkamp and cinematographer Trent Opaloch also make excellent use of the "found footage" style of filmmaking that has become so common these days; this drama unfolds as a blend of faux documentary, on-the-street guerrilla footage and — when necessary — "traditional" camerawork that allows us access to scenes that couldn't be obtained any other way.

Point-of-view purists may kick up a fuss, but who cares? Blomkamp and editor Julian Clarke assemble all the pieces brilliantly: You'll be hooked from the very first scenes.

It's important to note that some genuine thought and planning went into this manner of storytelling; it's not just the usual irritating excuse for jiggly camerawork that mars most recent flicks taking this approach. Blomkamp puts us right into this pell-mell saga, and gives it a sense of immediacy that makes District 9 the genius cinematic equivalent of what Orson Welles did so cleverly with radio, back when he frightened the hell out of listeners with his 1938 adaptation of War of the Worlds.

More to the point, this sucker moves.

Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell waste no time in setting the stage, beginning their tale with a series of on-camera interviews apparently being conducted after the fact: This both establishes the necessary back-story, while suggesting that these events — whatever they were — went very badly.

The time is an unspecified point in our near future, the setting Johannesburg, where for 20 years the city's residents have lived uneasily alongside a rather unusual refugee camp. Two decades earlier, a huge extra-terrestrial "mother ship" came to rest above Johannesburg and then ... did nothing. With the world's eyes on this South African metropolis, local forces finally broke into the vessel and discovered countless malnourished aliens, all apparently too helpless to do anything.