A slumdog no more.

“Monkey Man” came out of nowhere this year and fast became something I couldn’t wait for. It’a a film that from the very first trailer looked like it was in great hands, not just from Dev Patel, who makes a riveting directorial debut here, but also Jordan Peele, who as a producer has shown an even better taste in movies than he does as a director.

From the outset it looked like a South Asian John Wick, but thankfully that is not all it is. It’s a revenge thriller first and foremost but it also focuses on mythology and India’s class struggle and in essence it’s another nice bridging of worlds between Hollywood and Bollywood that we’ve seen since the pandemic.

For American audiences, we’re getting to know the legend of Hanuman. I knew the name sounded familiar because a Bollywood movie had come out in January about this very subject and i’m now very curious to check that out. From what I gather, he’s basically a God with special powers meant to protect the people from evil. He’s kind of a Jaipur Robin Hood, and Patel works wonders with that.

The way his character starts out he lives on the streets, he has to bargain and hustle for whatever he can get- either by throwing boxing matches or scamming his way into working as a dishwasher in a posh gentlemen’s club.

Patel of course came to prominence for “Slumdog Millionaire” and there we saw how India’s social structures competed against each other, and as director, he does a lot of the same thing here.

He’s very good at showing us a glistening city- one with a bustling nightlife, one that has its fair share of corruption, escorts and blow, but then we see the flipside of underground crime and the homeless systematically kept on the fringes, and where certain groups considered intolerable are treated as outcasts by their own government.

As director he gives this film an alluring quality, where the depravity of the nightlife brings together both the rich and those forced to be at their beck and call. The club setting, with its neon-infused aesthetic can really be hypnotic at times and the film uses music really well, particularly Roxanne by The Police.

But i’m sure you want to know about the action, which is as rapid fire and hard-hitting as anything in a John Wick movie. We get shoot-outs, we get high speed chases- one of which involving a three-wheeled taxi cart, and we get knock out-drag out fights, including one in a bathroom that rivals the one from Mission Impossible Fallout.

The cinematography gets up very close to all of this, which for the most part is a blessing. Here we get so close to all the brutality and depravity that we can almost smell the blood and do a line of coke ourselves.

This does lead to some disorientation as times too though. Getting the camera that close is undoubtedly not only going to lead to some shaky cam but at times it seems like even the cinematographer had a hell of a time trying to keep up and find his shot.

A place where ‘Monkey Man” differs from “John Wick” is that it’s not exactly a parade of brutal, violent fights. We get some nice stuff in the beginning and in the end but then there is also some deeper context, either shown to us in gritty depiction flashbacks or in a training montage that works because of the emphasis on self-actualization.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a training montage that worked so well in hyping up- it’s here where Patel the actor does some of his best work, portraying someone who has not only been through hell but needs to continue on through in order to forge himself into a true leader.

Are there good villains in this movie? Yes and no. They work as stand-ins for power or as hulking henchmen put in place to keep the masses as bay. But I do wish some of them were as memorable as Sharlto Copley, who has a small role here as a boxing promoter which is plays to maximum sleaze.

“Monkey Man” is not the most well-made movie i’ve seen this year but it shows a strong hand behind the camera, one that balances context, violence, and even some humor in equal measure. It’s probably my favorite movie this year so far