‘Monkey Man’ (2024)
Making his feature directorial debut, Dev Patel packs a lot of punch – make that punches – into this rapid-fire actioner that tries to do too much and ultimately buckles under the weight of its excess. Taking a page from the legend of the Hindu god Hanuman, who is rendered as half-human, half-monkey, Patel plays Kid, a busboy-waiter in a swanky Mumbai eatery who spends his off hours in an underground fight club where he dons a monkey mask and routinely gets the shit kicked out of him. A guy’s gotta make a living, right? Given the brutal beatdowns, it’s not much of a living, but Kid has bigger things in mind, namely the corrupt head of police (Sikandar Kher) he has a past beef with and a skeevy guru (Makrand Deshpande) exploiting his followers. What unfolds is one long revenge grudge that’s kinetically shot and impressively choreographed, yet lacks the appeal of the “John Wick” films it feels fashioned after. Part of that is the overuse of flashbacks and the veers into India’s national political scene, though the pokes at social stratification do land squarely. Clearly Patel and his co-writers were going for something ideological on a grand scale, but like “Wick” or the equally adrenaline-laced “RRR” (2022), which pulled in bigger themes of colonialism more seamlessly, “Monkey Man” is best when it is moving. It’s bloody, brutal and beautifully framed. Patel makes for convincing hammer of justice, using his fists more than a gun or a knife, which makes the gore and groans more visceral. It’s hard to imagine the thin young boy from “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) taking part in long, arduous “Old Boy” (2003) beatdowns, but here he is, and helming the film as well. In his corner are Sharlto Copley (“District 9”) as the cheeky fight club ring announcer and Ashwini Kalsekar as a voice of reason. This Patel passion project was greenlit by Netflix, which stepped away; filmmaker Jordan Peele (“Get Out,” “Nope”) stepped in as producer. Maybe all the grit and gore gave the brass at Netflix a scare, but given its track record on originals (“Heart of Stone,” “The Gray Man”) it should have hung in. This is an ambitious go that portends well for future Patel-crafted-and-conceived ventures.
‘DogMan’ (2023)
And now for something entirely different: Luc Besson, the man behind such manic pleasures as “Le Femme Nikita” (1990) and “The Fifth Element” (1997) and last out with the shoot-’em-up spy thriller “Anna” (2019), births this somber, reflective and dark character delve into a troubled young man escaping a torturous upbringing who lives in an industrial wasteland with a – wait for it – loyal pack of urban canines. It’s hard to fathom, not only because it’s unlike anything Besson has done before, but also because of his deep care for the character and restrained use of shock imagery and hyped-up tension. The film begins with a young man in drag, Douglas (Caleb Landry Jones), pulled over by police for driving a tractor-trailer semi-erratically. The cargo is a kennel’s worth of dogs. Down at the police station Evelyn (Jojo T. Gibbs), the resident psych, gains the young man’s trust; in well-meted flashbacks we see a backstory driven by an abusive father (Clemons Schick) who bred dogs for fighting, and his Judas bother (Alexander Settineri). The long and short is that the young Douglas is locked in a ramshackle coop with the dogs and, through vicious happenstance, pretty much loses the use of his legs. In that grim existence he becomes something of a dog whisperer, later using those skills to take it to the petty thugs shaking down the elderly and marginalized, as well as hatching a Robin Hood scheme. He also finds liberation and kinsmanship through the theater and a drag performance group. If that all sounds a bit wacky, it is. But it works (think the 2014 film “White God,” in which a pack of dogs also become the instrument of moral justice) primarily because Jones, so good in the underappreciated Aussie psychological drama “Nitram” (2021), again puts his impeccable pain-connoting capabilities on display, eerily reminiscent of the great Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Flawless” (1999), while Besson, known for his fanciful excess, sits back and lets his performer immerse the audience in the scarred character. It’s a masterful performance that should reward the curious.
‘Wicked Little Letters’ (2023)
The pairing of Olivia Colman (“The Favourite”) and Jessie Buckley (“Men”) in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter’’ (2021) was a stroke of casting genius. It earned the two best-acting Oscar nods (supporting for Buckley). In that film the two played the same character at different stages of one life, so they never appeared onscreen at the same time, which is why Thea Sharrock‘s cheeky comedy set in a small seaside town in Northern England post-World War I titillates. Colman and Buckley play women of vastly opposite makeups. Rose (Buckley) is a war widow with a sailor’s mouth and a penchant for public spectacle, whereas Colman’s Edith is a priggish spinster who lives with her preacher father (Timothy Spall) and ailing mother (Gemma Jones, so good in “Ammonite”). What besets the town of Littlehampton is a campaign of nasty missives that find their way anonymously into the mailboxes of god-fearing people, triggering shock and scandal due to their deeply personal and ad hominem nature – made even more eye-popping by the proliferation of F-bombs and other potty mouth language. Think of it as trolling before there was the Internet. Rose is the assumed originator, but a police investigation finds it hard to pin on her. There are a few other wrinkles from letters that have disruptive, even lethal, consequences, but that’s basically it and, as good as the two thespian aces are, it’s not enough. “Wicked Little Letters” is a paper-thin premise made flimsier by smug veers into hyperbole that bear few laughs and mostly predictable turns: A dream team caught up in a bittersweet disappointment.