Monkey Man

Director: Dev Patel
Starring: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Sikandar Kher, Sobhita Dhulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Adithi Kalkunte, Makarand Deshpande
Running Time: 121 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)   

John Wick meets Enter The Dragon and Slumdog Millionaire in Dev Patel's exhilarating directorial debut Monkey Man, an adrenaline fueled thriller that could double as a superhero origin story. The movie really sneaks up on you by over-delivering in every department, skillfully mashing familiar genre tropes into a completely original story that's as emotionally affecting as it is visually spectacular. 

Giving strong performances in films like Lion and The Green Knight over the years, few would have guessed Patel's acting career would take such a route, with him suddenly emerging as the latest ass kicking action star. Assuming 007 producers are still on the hunt for a new James Bond, this intensely believable lead turn as a damaged loner consumed with revenge could easily be his audition reel. 

Patel's first outing behind the camera bare all the hallmarks of a seasoned pro, traversing issues of poverty, oppression, government corruption and genocide. And in combining all those elements with a meditation on Indian culture and spirituality, co-writers Patel, Paul Angunawela and John Collee still manage to never lose focus of the protagonist's quest for retribution.

Years ago, a young, nameless boy referred to as "Kid" (Jatin Malik) is raised by his mother Neela (Adithi Kalkunte) in a small Indian village when their land is taken by fake spiritual guru Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande). His right hand man, corrupt police chief Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher) evicts the village and kills its inhabitants, the boy watching in horror as his mother is gruesomely murdered.

Now a young man, the Kid (Devon Patel) earns money working as a monkey masked competitor in a seedy, underground fight club where he's paid to lose by bombastic promoter Tiger (Sharlto Copley). Plotting revenge for his mother's killing, he gets a job at Kings, a luxury brothel where the politically influential Rana frequents. When owner Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar) moves Kid up from cook to VIP waiter, he's helped by small time gangster and co-worker Alphonso (Pitobash) and prostitute Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala). But when his sneak attack on Rana backfires, he becomes a wanted criminal. 

By utilizing carefully placed flashbacks, the film reveals just enough, as the dizzying present-day action helps fill in the blanks. With Patel's quiet, anguished performance conveying the connection between his character's tumultuous memories and current motivations, we watch as Kid is mercilessly beaten in these underground fights, only to be booed by the raucous crowd and stiffed on pay. 

If getting his foot in the door at King's brothel seems like Kid's quickest route to kill Rana, it's only just the beginning. Crafty as he is, the scrappy underdog's obsession causes him to lose focus when that opportunity arrives. Their shockingly violent bathroom face off is the first of many frenetic, highly stylized fight sequences, but its unresolved outcome takes this plot in an entirely different direction, as he prepares his body and mind for the inevitable rematch. 

Taken in at a local hijra temple for trans women who are all too familiar with the cruelty of Baba's regime, Kid is guided by their leader, Alpha (Vipin Sharma) to work through his past. The training sequences (which involves an acid trip and a musically timed punching bag workout) are some of the film's most powerful moments, thanks largely to Patel's commitment to the character. Kid's metamorphosis is underway, readying himself to exact revenge, while now also fighting for something bigger.

While the film does belong entirely to Patel, Deshpande and Kher each leave their marks as Kid's ruthless nemeses, with an entertaining Pitobash providing needed comic relief as the befuddled Aphonso. Even the small, but well presented subplot involving Sita doesn't pan out exactly how you'd expect, but is all the better for it. Donning the monkey mask again, Kid will get his second chance in a spectacularly choreographed final battle that contains a few more surprises.

Watching what Kid witnessed as a boy is difficult and disturbing, but entirely necessary for the last act to resonate so strongly. Essentially a battle between good and evil, his journey evolves into him coming to terms with his trauma before finally attempting to settle the score. Transforming into a far different hero than we met at the film's start, his powerful progression is cemented with a payoff that doesn't pull any punches, marking the arrival of an imaginative new voice in the genre.                                     

Lion

Director: Garth Davis
Starring: Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Kheshav Jadhav, Priyanka Bose
Running Time: 118 min.
Rating: PG-13

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

Lion earns its Best Picture nomination in its opening half, trusting the audience to not only comprehend, but become completely enveloped in a story that's initially spoken entirely in Hindi, and without the benefit of subtitles. It turns out to be a wise bet. The opening 45 minutes are so expertly calibrated and performed, brimming with lump-in-your-throat moments of disbelief, perseverance and astonishment, it was almost inevitable that whatever followed would pale in comparison. That it doesn't, at least completely, is somewhat of a tiny miracle, with much of that credit going to Australian director Garth Davis, who in adapting Saroo Brierley's 2013 autobiographical novel, A Long Way Home, temporarily refutes the theory that Hollywood filmmakers pander to the lowest common denominator when it comes to depicting foreign cultures.

It opens with a mistake that has ripple effect on more than a few lives, but the true revelation might come in how frequently something like this occurs, or how little we hear about it. Then after a certain point, Luke Davies Oscar-nominated screenplay does kind of hit a wall, which has led to harsh criticisms that the film stretches out a 30-second spot for Google Earth to a two-hour running length. But there's just too much else it has going for it to make those completely complaints valid since, despite a weaker middle portion, the performances, cinematography and underrated musical score make it too powerful an experience to dismiss.

It's 1986 and a five year-old boy named Saroo (Sunny Pawar) lives with his mother Kamla (Priyanka Bose), older brother Guduu (Abhishek Bharate) and younger sister in a tiny, poor village in Khandwa, India. One night, when Saroo joins his brother Guduu for a night of train-hopping for food, Guduu leaves his napping little sibling at a station and when Saroo awakens to find his brother hasn't returned, he boards a train headed to Calcutta. Now completely lost and wandering around a city where he doesn't speak or understand the Bengali language, Saroo must survive on the crowded streets and rely on the help of strangers, some with motives more nefarious than others. After landing in the custody of police and eventually an orphanage, Saroo is adopted by Australian couple Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John Brierley and goes to live with them in Tasmania.

We catch up with him twenty years later as a young man (now Dev Patel), studying for his degree in  hotel management and involved in a relationship with American classmate, Lucy (Rooney Mara). But despite Saroo having a fulfilled life and more than anyone from his background could have hoped for, there's an incompleteness that eats away at him, stemming from a desire to track down his biological family and make sense of that night's events over two decades ago. While his adopted mother struggles with family challenges of her own, Saroo wrestles with the guilt and hope of finding "home," embarking on a journey of self-discovery sure to have a lasting impact on those he holds closest.

The opening section actually shares some similarities with the last entirely Indian-flavored Best Picture nominee (and eventual winner), Slumdog Millionaire. And while we know, like that film, we'll eventually be given our happy ending, the scenes of kids on the street here have a far different tone, especially when watching a scared young Saroo aimlessly searching for his brother in a perilous situation surely qualifying as an immediate "Amber Alert" if it took place today in the states. Even in 1986, as commonplace as lost, homeless children in India may have been, it's still kind of frightening to see through western eyes.

What really sells this is the editing and the likably adorable child actor playing young Saroo, Sunny Pawar, whose combination of wide-eyed panic and innocence, along with some steely determination, carries the first half of the picture, eliminating the language barrier for both him and us. It seems like eternity he's on the streets, avoiding kidnappers and potential child molesters on his way to who knows where. It's disturbing how few people care about kids like him running around in the streets and really do nothing even when they think they are. That is until, by sheer luck, he meets someone who finally takes the necessary measures to offer actual help.

After watching this five-year-old struggle to survive after being separated from his sibling, it's of little surprise the second half of the film would have to work hard to match the Dickensian heights of its opening hour, both in tone and quality.  But it works well as a logical next chapter, thanks largely  to the strong performance of a nearly unrecognizable Dev Patel as the adult Saroo, whose suddenly jolted into finding his biological family, but fears the ramifications of what going forward with such a plan could do to his adoptive mother, already at the breaking point dealing with her other adopted Indian son, the emotionally disturbed Montash. The casting of both the child and adult versions of this role are spot-on, as actors Kheshav Jadhav and Divian Ladwa are so eerily identical in both manner and appearance you'd really think the filmmakers pulled a Boyhood, checking in with the same person twenty years later.

The entire second half really belongs to Patel, who nearly everyone had written off as a one-movie wonder after Slumdog Millionaire peaked almost a decade ago. And for a while there, it really looked like they were right. He returns in a big way here, a better, more mature actor, fully capable of handling the complexity of emotions running through Saroo as he embarks on his (Google) search for his birth mother. Just the very conceit of this true story could have been problematic on screen, but Patel takes what could have been a dramatically inert arc and draws us into his journey, which is as much internal as external. It helps that the first half of the picture was so strong, that our recollection of the opening half hour drives nearly all interest in the rest, with him filling in the blanks.

Rooney Mara's role and performance has been criticized by some as a throwaway, and while her work as Saroo's girlfriend Lucy won't be the first discussion point coming out of the film, it shouldn't  anyway. It's entirely functional since we need to know the man that young boy has become and what his life evolved into in the twenty years since the train station, not to mention what he could potentially be risking or giving up by doing this. Her part is what it is, and the never uninteresting actress serves it well, despite the nagging feeling she could have been given more. The other half of the equation is Nicole Kidman, who as Sue gets opportunities in the latter half to convey a woman crumbling at the emotional distance that's been put between her and her family, which has more to do with the struggles of raising the far less adjusted adopted son than Saroo's secret urge to reconcile his past.               

Intelligently addressing universal issues involving memory and identity, Lion tells a worthwhile, important story that most will feel more fulfilled having experienced. As for whether it manipulates, all movies do. The real question is how well. Aside from an unnecessary ending coda that spends too much time reinforcing a point the preceding hour and a half made perfectly clear (an epidemic these days), this more than passes that test, and does it with two phenomenal performances in the same central role, one which could easily be remembered as the year's most satisfying acting comeback.
     

Slumdog Millionaire

Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Madhur Mittal
Running Time: 121 min.
Rating: R

**** (out of ****)

There’s this guy I know who I tell everyone will have to be my “phone-a-friend” lifeline if I ever appear on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Talking to him it isn’t immediately obvious just how smart he is but listen long enough you realize he knows a little bit about everything and that knowledge comes not from a genius I.Q. but life experience and just simply paying attention. To say a Mensa membership is required to win that million is about as absurd as claiming Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire is a movie about a game show.

When the film first started I remember thinking it wasn’t what I expected. Then, about five minutes later it was over. I say five minutes because that’s exactly what it felt like. It went by in almost a blur and when it ended I had a funny feeling. It took a little bit to realize that feeling was my pulse finally slowing down. The movie washed over me as I lost myself in a hyperkinetic story that felt like it was moving a mile a minute. The performances, the cinematography, the music and the engulfing plot structure all come together in perfect harmony to create an experience that isn’t easily forgotten. And at the center of it is a genuine and affecting love story, and one that doesn’t feel as if it were cribbed out of a screenwriting handbook.

I frequently roll my eyes when I hear an “underdog” film has been anointed an awards contender right out of the gate but the fact is that this movie is pretty much airtight and easily the best on Boyle’s directorial résumé. You may think it can’t possibly be better than Trainspotting but that film, while great, benefited mostly from being at the right place at the right time. This is more than that. While it isn’t necessarily groundbreaking it does give us one of the most intriguing premises for a movie in years and something we haven’t seen before. With a concept as promising as this one the film already had a head start, but where Boyle could have easily dropped the ball, he squeezes every last dramatic drop out of it he can.
The film tells the story of Jamal (Dev Patel) an 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai who is one question away from winning 20 million rupees on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Having already racked up 10 million, the show breaks for the night a police inspector (Irfan Khan) arrests him for suspicion of cheating, refusing to believe that an uneducated street peasant could know the answers to all those questions. He tortures him into revealing how he did it as the film flashes back to show how key events in his life provided him with the correct answers. We witness his volatile relationship with hotheaded brother Salim (Madhur Mital) as well as the special bond he develops with the third member of their gang, and the girl he loves, Latika (Freida Pinto).

The flashbacks span years with three different actors playing the characters at various points, tragic circumstances eventually separating them, all leading to the moment when Jamal appears on the show. As we’re given each question we’re also given the accompanying story behind it. Questions range from “Who invented the revolver?” to “Which historical figure is on the $100 bill?” The film constantly astonishes in the way the answers show up in his life. One early question, involving a Bollywood star, has a payoff that’s both touching, disgusting and hysterical all at the same time. We know the ending and it doesn’t matter. What matters is how Jamal gets to it and that’s what kept my mouth open in amazement the entire time.

For all the praise this film has been getting over the past month Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay (based on the novel Q &A by Vikas Swarup) is actually underrated in terms of its depth. It’s smart enough to acknowledge that the questions on the show aren’t difficult and Jamal’s ability to answer them comes from just simply paying attention to what’s going on in his own life. It’s not in the slightest bit unrealistic or manipulative since many people have it in them the capacity to get to the final level of this show. The questions don’t reflect book smarts but rather everyday details we breeze by without ever paying attention to.

It isn’t a screenwriting contrivance that questions baring such a strong connection to key moments in Jamal’s life showed up. All the questions bare a strong connection to all of our lives, except the difference is we never notice or remember it. Jamal did. That’s why the police can’t fathom how he could know all the answers without cheating. They’re stuck in a mind-set that the answers are dependent on intelligence and in doing that they’ve exposed their own limited worldview, strangely confirming the very reason he’s destined to win.
The host of the show (expertly played by Bollywood veteran Anil Kapoor) is Regis Philbin re-imagined as an obnoxious, arrogant sleaze. He’s even more disbelieving of Jamal’s streak of “luck” the police and the script allows us a quiet scene with him that gives us real insight into why. The host also fails to grasp that a situation like this measures guts and resourcefulness more than brains, which is why Jamal never blinks in the face of his intimidation tactics. Compared to what else he’s dealt with in his life, its nothing. It takes a certain kind of person to maintain their composure under those circumstances and the flashbacks do more than tell us how he knew the answers. They tell us how he became that person.

All the characters are given that detailed treatment, specifically Jamal’s brother, Salim, who throughout the story is tough to really get a read on as to where his loyalty lies. At times he acts out in a jealous, violent rage while at others he’ll do anything to protect his brother. He’s rendered in both writing and performance with a wild inconsistency that can only be found in real life, not the movies. When we finally do get a read on him it’s an incredible moment and one that developed organically out of the story. Boyle handles the epic relationship and sometimes cruelly forced estrangement between Jamal and Latika as if it were a fragile keepsake. It’s always on the radar but doesn’t really explode until the film’s final 30 minutes. When it does, you realize just how important those early scenes were.

A lot of movies are released where a variety of actors have to play the same character at different ages, but I don’t think I’ve seen one that’s done it as effectively as this. I really believed those three little kids at the beginning of the film and the adults they grew to become at the end were the same people, which just bolsters its emotional resonance. The cast is comprised of mostly unknowns with the children giving revelatory performances and Patel holding his own against the more seasoned acting vets. He effectively conveys the world-weary blank slate on which the entire story is projected on.

Anyone who calls this a “feel-good movie,” drawing comparisons with Little Miss Sunshine or Juno just because the same studio released them or because this has a “happy ending” is deliberately trying to bury it. I can feel the backlash starting already and it’s sickening that some believe a film shouldn’t be permitted to deliver a life-affirming message while tackling serious issues, no matter how well it's done. Even in these tough times some still insist on suffering at the movies just to say the film ended on a down note. The question should never be whether an ending is happy or sad but rather if it logically follows the 110 minutes that preceded it. I’d challenge anyone to come up with an ending more earned or appropriate given the circumstances.

There’s even been some controversy as to whether the MPAA rated this too harshly with an “R,” with Boyle even publicly stating he was disappointed with the decision. I have no idea why. There’s no way this film should have ever been rated “PG-13” when there are scenes of genocide, a man running down the street on fire and children being tortured. Interestingly, many of the audience members I saw it with just couldn’t take it, either covering their eyes or exiting the theater entirely. It was probably misinformation about the film’s content combined with the context the scenes were presented in that caused those reactions, but the fact remains the same. This got the rating it deserved and it’s a good thing because if it didn’t the detractors would just have more ammunition to unfairly label the film as lightweight. Nothing about it is lightweight.

Boyle truly captures initial excitement we all felt when Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? first debuted in the states in 1999, reminding us that ABC really blew it when they decided to shove it down our throats 7 nights a week because they had no other original programming. They sealed its fate with overexposure, which is a shame because it was the most exciting game show that ever aired in North America. If another program were chosen to build the plot around it wouldn’t have worked. The show’s structure and questions just naturally lends itself to the cinematic story Boyle is conveying.
He also understands that many audiences don’t care for subtitles and finds a way to present them in a unique way that won’t turn us off while cinematographer Dod Mantel’s dazzling, colorful visuals perfectly accompany the energetic rush of the film, showing the slums of India in a light we’re entirely unaccustomed to. The music follows suit, specifically A.R. Rahman’s pulsating score and an unforgettable musical interlude set to M.I.A’s “Paper Planes." If you already loved the song as much as I did, you’ll love it even more after this.

We’ve reached that time of year where critics’ groups from across the country and beyond come out with their lists of 2008’s best films and a variety of cinematic achievement awards are handed it. We complain how they never seem to get it right, but how about those times when they actually do? This is practically a lock to win Best Picture in February and I’m not saying that because I feel it necessarily deserves it (I have to view all the releases this year before making that determination). What I am saying is that the voters are probably drooling all over themselves right now because this film contains all the universal themes they seem to go crazy over. Unfortunate as it is, recent tragic events will just make it all the more relevant. But I do worry massive critical and awards praise will turn people off from the film and prevent them from seeing just how smart and deep it is.

For those who claim Danny Boyle “sold out” by making a film that appeals to the mainstream I’d ask them to take a step back and see that this is the moment he’s been working toward his entire career and just be happy for him. This isn’t a Sam Raimi situation where a filmmaker abandoned the tools that brought him to the dance to court audience favor and a fat paycheck. It’s a case of a director finally finding more universally accessible material that perfectly matches his sensibilities. I always thought Boyle was solid but never considered he had a film like this in him. It takes supreme talent to make a crowd-pleaser that doesn’t succumb to manipulation or theatrics. Slumdog Millionaire is not only every bit as great as you’ve heard, it might even be a little better.