Eventually, New Orleans catches up with you the longer you spend in its environs.  I am currently in the Crescent City as I have been blessed to be invited to my sister’s sister-in-law’s birthday party, being celebrated here.  I like the town, but as I commented to the priest two days ago in Confession, this place is crazy.  He chuckled and replied that he could not argue with this statement.  I say this not only because of the lack of open liquor laws, or the non-stop pace of the assorted shenanigans raging at all hours of the day, but because of its sadder aspects.  While walking to meet up with my family earlier today, I witnessed a homeless man bathing in a dirty puddle on Canal Street.  This thoroughfare is in the shadows of casinos and well-established hotels with internationally respectable names like the Ritz-Carlton.  The things you can see in this place can cut you to the core, no matter how good is the food.  I thought of these things while watching Monkey Man tonight in a posh, yet quaint downtown movie theater.  Perhaps the rest of this review will explain why these things came to mind.

The Monkey Man is an Indian legend about a half human, half simian named Hanuman, who gets in trouble with the gods for eating the sun after mistaking it for a mango.  It is told to a young kid (Jatin Malik) by his mother, Neela (Adithi Kalkunte), as they pray together in the forest.  What happens to her is told throughout the story in flashbacks, but I will get it out of the way now.  Mother and son are part of a religious group targeted by the government, as influenced by corrupt Hindu spiritual guide Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande).  In order to clear them out of the way, police chief Rana Singh (Sikandar Ker) is sent with other armed personnel to kill those who will not move.  Neela is among the most vocal about her resistance, which brings a personal visit by Rana when the village is attacked.  She manages to fight off his sexual assault, but that only enrages him.  After choking her to death, he walks away, lighting her on fire.  The kid witnesses this from a hiding place on the above floor, and burns his hands in a feeble attempt to revive her enflamed corpse.  You can imagine how such an experience might stick with the kid until adulthood (Dev Patel).  One of the manifestations of this is by fighting for money while wearing a chimpanzee mask in honor of Hanuman.  However, he is not paid to win.  Rather, he is getting an income by taking a beating, fixing matches in the hopes of earning a surer flow of cash.  He has a plan for these funds.  The next stage is to find out all he can about a woman calling herself Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar).  She runs a restaurant and nightclub with the symbol of a crown on it, an identifying feature the kid recalls from his traumatic childhood memories of Rana, who had a matchbox from her establishment.  The kid sets in motion a scheme to have other poorer people like himself steal her wallet and get it to him.  This way he can return her article under the pretense of doing a good deed, and thereby ask for a job.  He knows he has come to the right place when he sees a picture of her with Rana on her wall.  Despite bringing back her lost item, he has to beg for a position, telling her that he will do the most menial of jobs, whatever is asked.  While on the job, he catches the attention of one of the flunkies that hangs around the business performing various nefarious duties, Alphonso (Pitobash).  At first, the kid tries to stick to his own work, but soon sees him as a way to learn how to be promoted.  This is in order to move up in the building, and thereby get closer to Rana.  Another person he meets along the way is Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala), a call-girl who is often with Rana.  She sees the kid’s wide-eyed reaction to laying eyes on Rana, and recognizes a person out of place in the kid.  What these experiences tell the kid is that he is going to have to figure out a way to smuggle a gun into the building and defeat the metal detectors set up to scan all the employees as they come in for their shifts.  The solution is found when he befriends a street dog who manages to squeeze into an outdoor area behind the kitchen.  With weapon in hand bought from a shady source, and following Rana into the bathroom, the kid hesitates just enough for Rana to defend himself.  The result is not the revenge for which the kid hoped, but a frantic flee not only from the building, but from the authorities controlled by Rana.  Upon running along a roof line and being wounded by a gun shot, the kid falls into a river and is rescued by another group of outcasts.  They are an assorted group of people, many of them belonging to the LGTBQ+ community, and they care for the kid.  Their leader, Alpha (Vipin Sharma), provides the kid with a place to get healthy, physically and spiritually.  With the physical part, picture any of the Rocky films and you get the idea.  Once he is ready, and with a new sense of purpose to defend the rights of other downtrodden people, the kid chooses the festival of Diwali to make his assault.  There is really nothing here that you have not seen in any other film of its ilk, and is probably why I had trouble staying awake for this part.  The important thing is that he gets some help from Alpha’s followers.  It all leads to Alpha, with the proper vengeance along the way doled out to Rana.  The corrupt guru manages to mortally wound the kid before being pretty horribly killed.  The final shot is of the kid falling to the ground with visions of Neela before his eyes.

There are many aspects of Monkey Man that make it unique, and many that pin it firmly with other revenge films.  I make this observation in light of the largely positive response critics have had to this film, which I frankly to not understand. Do not get me wrong, there is some freshness to it.  While somebody writing, producing, directing, and starring in their own movie is not entirely new, it is rare when such undertakings are done this competently.  Typically, there is some part of the process that ends up being neglected, and the rest comes crashing down with it, becoming a cinematic mess.  Also, if you are not familiar with Dev Patel, or maybe his face or name rings a faint bell, you might remember him more from his breakout performance in Slumdog Millionaire (2008).  If you look at his filmography, you will not find anything like the material you see in Monkey Man.  To Western audiences, an Indian action-hero is not something often viewed on the big-screen, though this is nothing unusual on the sub-continent.  Yet, if you take away these rather superficial factors, you are left with a revenge rampage that is little different from other I have seen.  Do those same commenters lauding it for essentially being the best thing since sliced bread not remember the Kill Bill series?  Indeed, you can relate almost any action flick with the desire to get even in some capacity.  As such, I am not sure what I am missing in Milk Man?  Could it be because he is willing to incorporate his cause into one of social justice?  Please do not mistake this for me being critical, or that I am trying to nitpick.  I just do not look at this one as being all that different from others of its ilk.

There might be another bit of Monkey Man I am missing that, nonetheless, had my Catholic senses on alert.  You would be right to guess that it has something to do with the prayer scene mentioned in the synopsis.  It is some of the best descriptions of Faith that I have witnessed on the silver screen.  Neela tells her son about God, and how the kid should praise Him at all times.  She even talks about God being love, and therefore worthy of such praise.  Many of you will undoubtedly point out that I am confusing this discussion with how Hindus talk about a “god,” which is kind of a deity above all the others.  There are also some practitioners of that religion that incorporate Jesus into their belief system.  This could be what is going on, and yet what is said in these scenes strikes me as being specifically Christian.  I could be wrong, and admittedly my ears are tuned in this manner.  Yet, it is the way love is discussed that makes me think as I do in this instance.  Thus, I see this as influencing how the kid makes his struggle less about himself, and more about addressing ills in Indian society.  Poverty is not something easily escaped, either over there or in the city in which I am currently visiting.  Early on, the kid, who is a part of these lower classes, discusses how those in positions of power do not notice people like him.  It takes him being forced to relive his last few days with Neela, and her reminders about God and how He loves us, for the kid to cast his endeavors in a different light.  Now, to be sure, and as I have pointed out before, revenge is not a Christian act.  As such, I would have liked to have seen him handle the situation differently.  Nonetheless, his mother certainly seemed to teach her son as God would hope.

Besides being not as original as many critics seem to think, Monkey Man has a lot of material in it that is not good to put in front of the eyes.  This is especially true for all the violence, and there are some brief sex scenes, too.  You can get the same type of movies with a little less emotional and spiritual baggage from other productions.  Skip this one while I make it through the rest of my New Orleans weekend.