“A gritty, crackling mosaic of culture and action inspiration from all over the world. Dev Patel is a force of nature and I wouldn’t want to be his competition from here on out,” Sydney proclaims in a glowing review of Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man, right after the film’s world premiere brought down the house at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival. “Force of nature” feels about right—Patel directs, writes, produces and stars in this political revenge tale, portraying an anonymous street fighter taking arms against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to exploit the disadvantaged. Threaded with spirituality and a charged indictment of the Indian caste system, the film pulses with an underdog mentality and a generous mouthful of gnashing teeth.

“This made me go bananas in the best possible way,” declares Bryan. “A brutally epic directorial debut from Dev Patel, injected with visceral action sequences and a deeply emotional story at its core. You can feel the love that Patel and team poured into this.” Monkey Man quickly landed on a 3.7 average rating on Letterboxd—Bryan’s not alone in appreciating the heart behind the film. That love was certainly felt at the Paramount Theater, where a visibly overwhelmed Patel wiped away tears following a standing ovation. Understandably so—to hear it from the director, his passion project needed a small series of miracles just to scrape through production, let alone make it to its boisterous world premiere.

“It was a very schizophrenic process making it. Dealing with an enormous crew during a pandemic, we were all locked on this island for nine months trying to make this thing, not being able to leave a bubble. It was very difficult,” Patel told Letterboxd on the SXSW red carpet. “I broke my hand, broke my foot, so we had to change all the choreo to one-handed stuff last minute. Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong. It was a process of brute force—but where there’s a will, there’s a way. I shot stuff in bathtubs on my iPhone. It’s all in there!”

Throw in a torn shoulder and an eye infection, and you get a little closer to understanding the litany of Patel’s physical woes behind what Sam describes as the film’s “hard-hitting, overwhelmingly visceral, and gleefully gory brawl scenes, maybe some of the best I’ve ever seen.” Echoing that sentiment, Laura shares: “Some of the gnarliest fighting I’ve ever seen in film, you can feel the never-named protagonist’s desperation to survive through the screen. Big ups to the cinematographer [Sharone Meir] and editors [Chris Gill, Tim Murrell and Kasra Rassoulzadegan] for being able to make scenes look how adrenaline feels. Incredible.”

That approach seems to have worked for Samuel who, in a four-and-a-half-star review, simply surmises, “There’s a shot where the camera is ‘punched’ out of first-person perspective. Dev Patel has the fucking juice.” A journey through the film’s Letterboxd responses also reveals a deep well of appreciation for Monkey Man’s myriad of action influences, as is the case with Shiv, who shares, “Whether it be the climax that bursts like a Diwali pataka or individual fight sequences that pay homage to various East Asian combat styles, the action feels raw, fresh, and complex.”

Patel is all too eager to shout out his genre inspirations as a filmmaker. “I snuck downstairs when I was a little kid, way past my bedtime, and I watched Bruce Lee on screen through the banister in Enter the Dragon,” he shared during the premiere’s on-stage introduction. “I’d never seen anyone who looked slightly like me before, and this guy blistered the screen. He had the same pigment as me. From that day on, I fell in love with action movies—from Jet Li, Sammo Hung, Donnie Yen, straight through to the Indonesian guys doing The Raid.”

“Then I found out about Korean cinema. Fuck me, those guys do it good,” he added to uproarious cheers. “You guys like John Wick? I love John Wick. I’m tipping my hat to so many things here. All of that stuff that I grew up with [from] Johnny Lever to the Bollywood films my grandparents had me watch.”

As Monkey Man traverses its global influences, Patel grounds the film in his own heritage. Reflecting on the film’s Indian roots, Aryan praises, “It isn’t a cultural shortcut, it is a true study of stories we are told as children.” Embracing that cultural core was crucial for Patel, who ties his protagonist’s journey to Hanuman from the Hindu epic Ramayana, drawing from memories of his granddad recounting the figure’s story. “When you go deep into it, he’s a guy who lost faith in himself, and had to be reminded of who he was,” the director said.

Monkey Man’s unnamed hero finds strength from the legend—and through the community he builds with others on society’s margins, who stand against the same violent oppression that murdered his mother. “I really wanted to touch on the caste system in India,” Patel added. “The idea [that] you have the poor at the bottom, slaving away in these kitchens, then you go up to the land of the kings, and then above them is god, a man-made god polluting and corrupting religion.”