Monkey Man was released on Friday, April 5. The film follows a man who makes a living in an underground fight club, as he unleashes a campaign of retribution on the men who took everything from him.

This was a frustrating watch for me. On one hand, there are some impressive moments of action, but on the other hand, I couldn’t get invested in the story or characters at all.

As an action movie, this excels for the most part. Most of the action sequences were fast-paced, exhilarating and visceral. You could feel the punches through the screen because of the way it was filmed. However, at times this did almost become too in-your-face, and the shakiness in these sequences took me out of the flick on a couple of occasions.

I can understand why this film is getting praise, but to me, the story felt slightly disjointed. I appreciated the cultural relations to Hanuman and some social commentary, but ultimately the flick didn’t really have all that much to say about the issues. Monkey Man brings up a lot of different ideas, but that is probably to a fault, because it can never seem to just focus on one.

My biggest issue with Monkey Man was the pacing. It starts off fast-paced, slows way down and then tries to pick things back up for an exciting conclusion. Unfortunately, after a sluggish middle act, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the ending. Did I have fun with the action sequences? Sure… but it wasn’t the complete movie experience that I was hoping for.

In the end, for Dev Patel’s directorial debut, Monkey Man was a solid first effort. The movie has its own style that makes it stand out, especially in the action genre. Unfortunately, none of the characters outside of Patel’s were very compelling and the story never came together for me. Monkey Man bit off more than it could chew.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5