I am unable to lie, it has taken me some time to get on board with the “Dev Patel must be Bond” practice. Monkey Man, then, will certainly make a convert of anybody. Within the post-having-seen-Monkey-Man world, I’ve change into completely satisfied that to decide on anybody else for the function could be a tragically missed alternative—sorry, Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
It isn’t even that Monkey Man is all that Bond-y. Patel’s directorial debut is a frenetic, kinetic motion revenge joint set in India, during which Patel’s character, Child, violently tracks down and slaughters the corrupt authorities officers who burned down his childhood house and murdered his mom. The primary picture we see is of Child within the ring at an underground battle membership, the place he fights a sequence of muscleheads to predetermined outcomes. The fighters all have WWE-style gimmicks, and Child’s gimmick gives the title; he is Monkey Man, his face hid by an affordable monkey masks, impressed by the mythology of simian deity Lord Hanuman. His job is to get completely whooped. Which he does. Again and again. Many, many bloody noses.
So that is the very first thing we find out about Child: He is keen to take bloody beating after bloody beating if it is in service of his better trigger, that aforementioned revenge. Within the meantime, he will get a job at an off-the-books VIP membership, initially working as a kitchen porter, and later as a waiter for the super-VIPs on the high-rollers flooring. It is a disgusting place—trafficked ladies are compelled into sexual slavery, purchased and bought with the convenience of ordering a bottle of Bollinger—however Child retains his eye on the prize. (Tonally, if we have been to position this in an present Bond period, it might be someplace between Dalton and Craig on the dark-and-gritty scale.) The entire level of working there? At the least one of many corrupt officers, a gruff cop, is an everyday. That is the place Child’ll get his shot.
There’s a sense, even right here, of the superspy about him: I imply, he is primarily doing espionage on a person degree, pretending to be somebody he is not to search out info that can assist him full his deathly mission. However the place Patel actually begins to stake his declare for 007 are in Monkey Man’s tightly choreographed, ultra-gnarly motion scenes, which evoke the dance-like grace and cadence of John Wick (there is a realizing reference to Wick early on) and the neon-soaked grit of Nicolas Winding Refn. After Child’s tried assassination of the cop — within the males’s, little question, resulting in a damaging lavatory brawl evocative of the one in Mission: Unattainable — Fallout — goes disastrously unsuitable, he has to kick-box his method all the way down to the road—in a waiter’s black tie garb, no much less, which is no less than a bit 007.
Let’s be sincere. The primary requirement of a Bond actor, past anything, is that he should conceivably be capable to kick ass, not least the faceless henchmen the double-O is so usually known as on to dispatch with aplomb. In Monkey Man, Patel’s motion hero bonafides are on full show: although not with out grounding vulnerability, he is like an unstoppable bodily pressure, chopping, kicking and hearth axe-ing his method via a conveyor belt of dangerous guys. And like every self-respecting agent on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he has to get artistic, weaponizing furnishings and the like when his fingers aren’t fairly sufficient.
And, with out inadvertently objectifying Patel, it is essential to notice that it is type of a prerequisite that Bond is scorching—males wish to be him, ladies wish to be with him—and he has by no means been extra alluring. He provides himself various glory photographs, a fringe good thing about directing your self. And what? Once you’re rocking a physique like that—taut, muscular and lean as a little bit of steak— why would not you?
After Monkey Man, it could be very straightforward to think about Patel taking up globetrotting missions and face down megalomaniacal villains with aspirations in direction of world domination. In truth, it is such a formidable directorial calling card, you would possibly ponder whether he is primed to tackle two double-O jobs without delay. What do you reckon, Barbara Broccoli? The primary director-actor in Bond historical past? You may wrestle to search out a better option. He would possibly’ve already dismissed the thought, however fuck it—we might be on our knees.
