A young man ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he’s beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, he discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite.

As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.

Review

Emma (Hooligans OG) – Coming from the esteemed Jordan Peele, I had high hopes for this film. As always, I never watch the trailers so had very little idea of what this movie was about.

It would be a disservice to reduce the film down to “an Indian version of John Wick”, but if you consider the overarching plot, the commonalities aren’t hard to miss: a man’s mother is slaughtered by a dirty cop, and in his quest to avenge her, he leaves a slew of bodies in his wake.

The movie opens with an underground fight scene between a rakish fighter donning a monkey mask (played by Dev Patel) and a fighter twice his size. Sharlto Copley (in his most South African since Wikus van der Merwe in District 9) plays a crooked bookie/announcer, mocking the “Monkey Man” repeatedly until his opponent wins the duel. We find out shortly afterwards that the game is in fact rigged – Sharlto runs the show and hands “Monkey Man” a wad of cash – his reward for getting beaten to a pulp.

In an attempt to infiltrate the corrupt world of dirty cops, politicians and escorts, “Monkey Man” takes a job at a high-end brothel run by the ball-buster kingpin “Queenie”. Through a photograph on the wall of her office and flashbacks, it’s revealed that a close friend of Queenie, Rana Singh, is the same person who killed Monkey Man’s mother. Dum-dum-duuum.

We see Monkey Man gaining access to the drug-fuelled VIP room of the brothel, where Rana and his cohorts get their kicks. He attacks Rana and is subsequently chased by the local police, who manage to get a bullet into him. He plummets into a filthy river, woken up the next morning by a sage-looking person in feminine dress. Monkey Man learns that the temple he finds himself in is run by a transgender community (a real-life Indian minority group known as hijra) who are shunned by society and forced to make this place their home. It’s commendable that Dev chose to highlight their plight – and it’s not the only political stance he takes. We also learn that Rana and his police force have aligned themselves with a devious “guru” who preaches violence in the name of peace. 

The movie cuts to shots of Monkey Man training at the temple, with one particular training exercise involving replicating a drumbeat while fighting a punching bag filled with rice. This kind of plot point, where the protagonist undergoes rigorous physical training to prepare for the challenges ahead, has been overdone and I found myself cringing. 

Monkey Man says very little in the film, instead relying on his stoic expressions and impressive fight choreography to convey his emotions. This movie is action-focused, with very little attention given to dialogue. If you’re in the mood for a skop, skiet and donder flick, you’ve come to the right place. While the stunt work is incredible, the fight scenes were ridiculously gory and had me peeping through my fingers on multiple occasions.

I won’t give the rest away. Don’t go in expecting a Jordan Peele masterpiece. But as Dev Patel’s directorial debut, it’s a sincere portrayal of the against-all-odds hero who finally gets his revenge. 6/10

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