Wiz RECOMMENDS Monkey Man

Monkey Man is a film that makes critical rookie mistakes.

It expands when it should retract. It pulls punches when it should have hit hard. It strives for ambition when it should have kept things to the fundamentals.

Dev Patel's revenge thriller about a man named "Kid" who gets into a sinister organization to find a way to murder the people who killed his mother should have just stuck with this simple, concise premise.

Instead, Patel decided to add subplots revolving around spirituality and politics that do more to distract from the main story than to enhance it.

It's easy to understand why he went this route: there is a complex history involving India, its politics and the spirituality of its people. But was it entirely necessary to put this into a bloody, brutal revenge fantasy?

The bloating of the plot is further compounded by the overall story of the film, which is formulaic and tropey at best.

If you've seen any revenge thriller, the elements that you'd expect are all in there:

• Quiet, but menacing lead
• Over the top evil villains
• Beautiful but scared woman who is in the crosshairs
• A person or group of people who help the main character find his strength to get back up.

Now, this isn't necessarily bad on the face of it: A good revenge thriller can be quite formulaic but still be exciting and satisfying.

To do that, you need really good action...and Monkey Man is decent overall.

It is clear Patel can do the hand-to-hand fighting real well as he executes the stunts to feel believable. On top of that, some of the fight scenes are particularly visceral and brutal, showing all sorts of skin tearing, blood and broken bones.

But the action is marred by some of the decisions Patel made behind the camera.

For example, during the first big fight scenes in the club at the end of the 1st act, the camera movement in the action scenes jump around and feel way too chaotic.

Now, there's likely a reason why Patel went this route: to show the inexperience and exasperation of the main character in all the chaos.

But that could have easily been told by Patel and the other actors showing that in the action. The camera placement and movement was too much to show too little.

What's odd is that Patel did correct this in the big finale of the film: all of the fight scenes and stunts are clearly visible and shows all of the fighting in its brutal, bloody glory.

And yet, another strange thing that Patel does in this film is deciding to pull back on some of the brutality.

The visuals of the film portray the place the film is set as dark, grungy, grim but bathed in neon light and fluorescent bulbs. You see a lot of squalor and dirty, delpated areas throughout the film.

The visual storytelling of the film is saying that this will be a brutal, messy film. And yet, Patel in some scenes shys away from the brutal violence in some scenes.

Honestly, the one thing I will remember with Monkey Man is that it feels like a film where the director is working through his first time jitters as the film progresses in plot.

Patel goes for something bigger and more thoughtful in his first go around where, honestly, he should have been sticking to the basics and just telling a brutally efficient story.

And yet, that's what makes this film interesting: it's a visual example of someone getting their legs up as an artist and finding that vision while showing the cuts, bruises and warts that most directors would rather you not see.

As that type of curiosity, it's an interesting and entertaining watch.