Dev Patel on Monkey Man and 7 martial arts must-sees

Action extravaganza Monkey Man brings us martial arts movies through a Bollywood lens. An Indian man named Kid (Dev Patel, Chappie and The Newsroom S1-3) works as a masked wrestler under the thumb of shady fight promoter Tiger (Sharlto Copley, District 9, Chappie, Ted K). But Kid has a second job as a waiter at Kings, a brothel and drug den disguised as a social club. He’s on a secret mission to get closer to corrupt police official Rana (Sikandar Kher) – the man responsible for massacring Kid’s village and his mother – along with his rich and powerful cronies. 

“The film is an ode to my parents and my ancestry. It’s about roots. It’s an ode to an incredible mother as well, and how far someone will go to avenge someone he loves so dearly – his best friend, his teacher, his idol. There’s a bit in it for everyone, really,” says Monkey Man’s writer-producer-director-lead actor, Dev Patel. “I poured all of myself into this. I’ve long been a huge fan of the action genre, and this is my humble offering to a genre I love so much … It’s not like your usual action flick that just starts with action and keeps going. There is plotting and building in a world, and it’s pensive. And then it absolutely explodes in the second act, and it’s absolute mayhem. We got this huge reception at this festival, South by Southwest. People were whooping and hollering and throwing popcorn at the screen, and I’d never seen anything like it. It’s a fun, fun film.”

Stream Monkey Man on Showmax now.

Faith, the secret weapon 

“I wanted to infuse it with some culture and social resonance, along with some cool kicks, punches and the odd elbow here or there,” says Dev, who performed all his own fights in Monkey Man under the guidance of fight coordinator Brahim Chab.

“First and foremost, it’s a revenge film about faith – the beauty of religion, particularly in an uneducated populace where the iconographies, the stories, can be incredible teachers and inspirations and touch points for children, but at the same time, how it can be monetised and weaponised everywhere in the world, to be honest.” 

Blending Bollywood and Bruce Lee

Dev uses an Indian context to give Monkey Man a fascinating spin on East Asian martial arts movies. For starters, Monkey Man as a hero is inspired by the Hindu deity Hanuman, the invincible Monkey God. Dev also looked at the caste system in India. And he combined that with movie inspiration. The result, he explains, can be seen in the entire system that Kid has to infiltrate to strike at Rana, starting from the bottom in the kitchen of the club.

“This windowless hellhole, in this kitchen serving dishes to the elite above him. And then he gets to the next layer, where he’s in the land of kings, which is the name of the club, Kings Club. And the next layer above that is where the man-made gods are. He must challenge those men, too, the untouchables. The true untouchables.”

For Dev, there’s a direct parallel to martial arts movies. “From the greatest action films like Game of Death with Bruce Lee, where he has to work his way up the pagoda to fight Kareem Abdul Jabbar. And that amazing sequence at the end where the bosses get tougher and bigger and badder.”

Martial arts movie madness!

Throughout Monkey Man, Dev’s devotion to the classics shines through. “People might be surprised when they see me drenched in blood, biting a knife into someone’s neck. Like, Dev Patel’s got a really sick brain! But with the first film that really captivated me, I snuck downstairs and watched Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon through the bannister, way past my bedtime. And I was utterly enthralled by this man with a similar pigment to me, and dark hair. He captivated me! I plastered his pictures all through my bedroom. And then that became my obsession with the action genre from Jet Li, to Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, then the Indonesian guys that did The Raid. And then I got introduced to Korean cinema. They do revenge better than anyone.”

Dev mashed it all up with the Bollywood films his parents watched, and he calls the result, “This bombastic, strange cultural cocktail, which is me – slightly awkward and unruly at times too, but with a lot of heart. That’s what this film is, at its core. It’s an anthem for the underdog, and the everyman who has to face so much adversity, so much failure. Being supported by the other underdogs, that’s only when he realises his true potential.”

That epic training sequence

Since you can’t have a hero’s journey without a training sequence, Dev has also given this a distinctly Indian flavour. “The training montage was my tribute to those legendary training montages from Rocky. I wanted to do a musical piece, because music is so big in Indian culture. I obviously didn’t want to do the dancing around a tree Bollywood thing, or what we’ve done in Slumdog. I’m into hip hop and all that stuff [but] a very dear friend of mine who also worked on this film as a producer, Raghuvir Joshi, is a huge Indian classical music fan. Once I started understanding the intricacies and the commitment of this art form – which is not getting the real credit it deserves in a new, burgeoning TikTok world – I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to do our training sequence with this guy they call Ustad (which means Maestro) Zakir Hussain?’ He toured with Ravi Shankar and The Beatles. And he [Ravi] came down, quarantined for two weeks, and played the tabla ferociously for three days. I’m playing the bags (boxing with a speed bag), he’s tearing up the drums, and we have this wordless training sequence where he speaks with me through his instrument, like R2D2, in a way. In India, they call it a jugalbandi, which is like a call and answer in jazz. It’s like riffing with each other. So there’s a few jokes in there. And he teaches this man rhythm and to tune his instrument (his body). We also infuse that sequence as when it goes from a singular call to action, to something he’s fighting for a nation at that point. It’s one of my favourite sequences. It took us months and months to get right,” reveals Dev.

Getting fighting fit

While Dev doesn’t have the build to be a Rocky or one of the huge, muscular Hollywood action movie stars, being a lean, mean punching machine allows him to slot in with the martial arts stars he idolised as a kid. And it’s a space he’s at home in. Dev has been practising Taekwondo since the age of 10 and won a bronze medal at the AIMMA World Championships in 2004.

“I wanted to create an action hero that wasn’t bursting out of his suit. He had to be a believable waiter in this place,” says Dev. “The idea was to try and get as close to Bruce Lee ‘shredded’ as possible. So it was lettuce, a sweet potato and salmon three times a day, every day for months, while the crew was having the most delicious Indonesian food! And I would wake up in the morning and be doing all of that action choreography, hitting the rubber bands, doing my best, Jane Fonda. It was a lot. But he’s, hopefully, a more attainable, more realistic, authentic look at what an underdog Avenger would look like. He’s not someone that is going to take on 100 men and come out unscathed and have the perfect quip for every moment. He’s a man dealing with extreme trauma, and he fails and tries and fails and fails again. It’s only when he finds other underdogs, who can believe in him and build him up, that he really finds his true potential.”

7 martial arts must-sees on Showmax

After looking at Dev’s list of inspirations, we visited the Showmax dojo to meet more fight masters. Check out these seven movies and series that pack a punch.

1. Polite Society

Action comedy. After Lena Khan (Ritu Ayra, Journalist Barbie in Barbie) drops out of her London art school, her parents score a dream husband for her when they accept an invitation from posh Raheela Shah (Nimra Busha) so Lena can meet her son Salim (Akshay Khanna), a rich, handsome, successful geneticist. But Lena’s schoolgirl and stuntwoman-in-training sister Ria (Priya Kansara, Miss Eaton in Bridgerton) sets up an audacious anti-wedding heist, complete with stunt coordinator Crispin Layfield and fight coordinator Rob Lock’s

Bollywood-style dance-fight number, inspired by Madhuri Dixit’s dance in the film Devdas. 

2. Warrior Season 1-2

Warrior, based on a concept developed by martial arts legend Bruce Lee, and filmed at Cape Town Film Studios, explores a little-known corner of American history as it takes us into San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Tong Wars era, which arose as a response to mass racist attacks on Asian immigrants (seen especially vividly in Season 2 episode 9, which was based on the July 1887 riots). There is epic fight choreography in every episode thanks to stunt coordinator Brett Chan. 

3. The Iron Fisted Monk

Looking for a throwback? This gory 1977 classic is Sammo Hung’s first film as a director, and it’s based on the story of real-life hero Miller Six and his battle against oppressive Manchu rulers. There’s a shaolin temple training sequence, tests created by four masters, and epic fight choreography once Chang Sing Hung enters the picture as The Iron Fisted Monk. It also gets a serious warning for sexual violence, though.

4. Princess and Seven Kung Fu Masters

Martial arts comedy is a rare but much-loved genre. In this love letter to classic martial arts films, seven kung fu masters and the daughter of a Chinese warlord must save a warlord who refuses to collaborate with their Japanese enemies. Created by Jing Wong (Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong, My Kickass Wife and Enter the Fat Dragon), starring Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, Philip Ng, Jiang Lu-Xia, Yuen Wah, Eric Tsang, Xing Yu, and Dennis To, with stunt coordinator Phillip Chung-Fung Kwok. 

5. Kung Fu Panda

This animated martial arts comedy draws on many of the classic martial arts film tropes as Po the panda trains to become the prophesied Dragon Warrior – the only kung fu master who can protect the Valley of Peace. The film was partly inspired by Stephen Chow’s 2004 martial arts action comedy film, Kung Fu Hustle, along with Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Since even animated films need expert fight choreographers, here the credit goes to martial arts consultant Eric Chen, and kung fu choreographer Rodolphe Guenoden. Also watch: Kung Fu Panda 3

6. Tiger Cage 2

Tiger Cage stars Donnie Yen, who is best known for portraying Bruce Lee’s mentor – Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man – in the Ip Man film series, which earned him a place in the Martial Arts Hall of Fame. In this sequel to the original 1988 Tiger Cage film, Donnie returns as Dragon Yau, a hot-headed ex-cop who gets falsely accused of masterminding a heist while he’s actually on the way to see a divorce lawyer. The final fight scene between Donnie and Michael Woods is one of the all-time greats, and it’s upheld as peak Hong Kong cinema.

Also watch: Donnie’s massively influential and  multi-award-winning martial arts film Ip Man arrives on Showmax on Monday, 28 October. 

7. Vanguard

Jackie Chan plays the commander of Vanguard, an international security agency that’s called into action to rescue kidnapping victims who were taken during London Chinatown’s Chinese New Year festival. Co-stars include Yang Yang and Miya Muqi, with fight choreography by the Jackie Chan stunt team, Stanley Tong, and Guanhua Han. For Jackie Chan superfan completists, we also have The Killer Meteors (1976).

MMA grab bag: Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match, Quan Dao: The Journey of a Boxer, Playboy Cops, The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, Black Ransom, The New Option, The Most Wanted.