When most actors try their hand at directing, the result is normally some kind of intricate character drama. Dev Patel, bless him, made an action movie instead, and we could not be more excited.
When is Monkey Man being released in the UK?
Monkey Man hits UK cinemas on April 5.
What is Monkey Man about?
We set our scene in the fictional Indian city of Yatana, where Dev Patel’s mononymous Kid is making a brutal living on the underground fight club circuit, where he fights while wearing a monkey mask (hence the title). He’s got more on his mind than violence, though—or at least he has a different flavour of violence on his mind. Our hero is on a mission of revenge, principally for the death of his mother, but in a more general sense against the whole corrupt system that facilitated her murder.
The cast of Monkey Man
Dev Patel writes, directs, produces, and stars as Kid; District 9‘s Sharlto Copley is sleazy fight promoter Tiger; Adithi Kalkunte is Kid’s mother, Neela; and Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Sikandar Kher, Sobhita Dhulipala, Makarand Deshpande, and Ashwini Kalsekar round out the cast. Fun fact: this was gonna be a Netflix release until Get Out director Jordan Peele deemed it worthy of a theatrical release and put it out through his Monkey Paw production shingle.
Monkey Man trailer
Why we’re excited about Monkey Man
Did you know Dev Patel is a lifelong martial arts devotee with a deep and abiding love of action cinema? It was news to us, too, but it’s clear the Slumdog Millionaire star isn’t fooling around here. Monkey Man has been getting rave reviews following its global premiere at SXSW, and we can’t wait to see the kid from Lion knock the living hell out of a wide variety of richly deserving villains.
