Monkey Man
Universal Pictures | Release Date: April 5, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
38
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The A.V. ClubMatthew JacksonMar 12, 2024
Patel’s film may have found its greatest success in the way it seamlessly, powerfully translates the director’s pure, kinetic love of cinema into something bold, new, and unforgettable. Read full review
91
Original-CinChris KnightApr 5, 2024
There’s violence aplenty, which is another reason the John Wick reference has proven so sticky. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 4, 2024
Dev Patel comes out swinging in the monumentally entertaining and bare-knuckled revenge flick “Monkey Man,” serving up a series of extended and elaborate fight sequences so bruising and hyper-violent they make the action in the “Road House” reboot seem like a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Read full review
85
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeApr 5, 2024
What Patel has crafted delivers both kinetic action and real-world relevance, an exceedingly rare combination. Read full review
83
ConsequenceLiz Shannon MillerApr 4, 2024
While the stakes are never less than serious and the tone never wavers, there’s still a playfulness to many of Monkey Man’s fight scenes that makes them thrilling to watch — and to generate excitement for whatever Patel might choose to do next. Read full review
82
The AtlanticShirley LiApr 5, 2024
The result is a stylish thriller that’s also a cathartic unleashing of Patel as a performer and storyteller. With Monkey Man, he asserts himself as someone who can break the boundaries Hollywood typically establishes for actors like him. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeApr 8, 2024
It’s a visceral, breathless rampage, and while it’s a little rough around the edges at times, the picture’s brawling energy makes it an exhilarating ride. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 3, 2024
Patel turns it into a very exciting and stylish movie. His previous acting work didn’t obviously point to a kickass action career, although his performance in The Green Knight might have given us a hint. He’s evolved. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMar 28, 2024
The new Dev Patel is taking no prisoners in this slice of Mumbai mayhem, announcing himself as a filmmaker with possibly the most ferocious mainstream action movie since The Raid, and as an action star by sticking a knife into a goon’s neck. With his teeth. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamMar 26, 2024
A savage triumph. Read full review
80
EmpireNick de SemlyenMar 26, 2024
Stylish, high-energy, smart and eye-wateringly violent. There are quibbles, for sure, but where it counts, Monkey Man goes bananas in the best possible way. Read full review
80
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiMar 16, 2024
The film certainly delivers on the action set pieces, but it also scales back to lay the groundwork for the story so that the payoff is well worth it. Monkey Man isn’t some basic action thriller; it’s an underdog story about the power of the people. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearMar 12, 2024
Patel’s pet project is as much a mash note to a way of presenting bloody-knuckled spectacle as it is a standard thriller. Read full review
80
TheWrapChase HutchinsonMar 12, 2024
While far more grim than one might expect, and miles away from being a straight crowd-pleaser, it proves Patel is a force to be reckoned with, not only as an action star but as someone with skill behind the camera. Read full review
80
SlashfilmJacob HallMar 12, 2024
It's an action movie for progressive-minded audiences who need some kind of relief in an era of instability and terror as well as an action movie for folks who just want to watch Dev Patel decimate every single person who dares cross his path. Read full review
80
Screen DailyRobert DanielsMar 12, 2024
As a star, Patel has rarely been better. And as a director, he grants an intoxicatingly gruesome vision of the kind of gritty vehicles he could steer in the future. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfApr 3, 2024
Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man is a gritty, nasty piece of work. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 8, 2024
Monkey Man may be a silly-sounding title but the story it tells is anything but silly. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineJustin ClarkApr 5, 2024
Monkey Man is in no rush to get where it’s going and Dev Patel puts a lot of trust in his audience to stick with him to see where it arrives. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittApr 4, 2024
In his directorial debut “Monkey Man,” Dev Patel gifts action-movie fans with a multilayered, hyperviolent narrative. Sure, he pulls off a deep dive into Indian mythology, yet he's pretty darn good at attacking goons with fireworks, platform shoes and all manner of sharp objects too. Read full review
75
ObserverOliver JonesApr 4, 2024
A kitchen-sink directorial debut from actor Dev Patel, Monkey Man is a knife-through-the-throat revenge thriller, a diatribe against institutional injustice and wealth inequality, an ode to both ancient and modern Indian culture and folklore, and a portfolio that proudly displays the action hero bona fides of its prodigiously muscled leading man— who just so happens to be the director himself. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesKatie WalshApr 4, 2024
Patel’s passion project Monkey Man is a big swing, and a big swerve for the actor. Luckily, it connects, landing with a satisfyingly bone-crunching intensity. And if the movie is intended as Patel’s calling card, he leaves the whole damn deck on the table. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 3, 2024
Monkey Man gives a well-worn genre a furious and funny kick in the ‘nads. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJake CoyleApr 3, 2024
Regardless of any incongruities, “Monkey Man” makes for a forceful directorial debut from Patel. More than anything else, he brings a compelling gravity to a film that is quite serious about getting seriously brutal. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussApr 2, 2024
It’s hard to believe that the likable British star of “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Lion” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” could be the next actor to become a hard-charging action director. But Patel’s filmmaking debut, “Monkey Man,” makes a bone-breaking case for just that. Read full review
75
Paste MagazineJacob OllerMar 14, 2024
Monkey Man is the kind of action movie I want to see more of, and it gives Patel the chance to turn himself into the kind of action star he wants to see. Read full review
75
IndieWireKatie RifeMar 12, 2024
The cuts are quick and the sound effects are bone-crunching, and were it not for an extended lull in the middle of the movie, it would be an exhilarating ride. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoMar 12, 2024
Monkey Man may be an origin story for a future action franchise character, but it feels more to me like an origin story for a future action star and director. Read full review
75
The Film StageJohn FinkMar 12, 2024
With a premise that is as simple or as complex as you’d like it to be, Monkey Man anoints Dev Patel as a new action director and star. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekApr 5, 2024
Whatever Patel is going for, he's at least singing out with conviction—not just from the diaphragm but also from the muscle better known as the heart. Read full review
70
Film ThreatAlan NgApr 5, 2024
For his rookie debut, Dev Patel ultimately produced a fun action film with pacing issues—in my humble opinion. Monkey Man’s Indian influence makes this story of class and caste fascinating to behold. Read full review
70
Little White LiesKambole CampbellApr 4, 2024
Monkey Man is an energetic and thoughtful debut feature that leaves one excited about what Patel’s future as an action star might look like. Read full review
70
We Got This CoveredFrancisca TinocoApr 3, 2024
The heart Dev Patel put into Monkey Man is clear at every turn, but the actor-turned-director might have bitten off more than he could chew in his behind-the-camera debut. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeMar 12, 2024
With Monkey Man, Patel offers an allegorical story that combines the technical and heroic sensibilities of his favorite action figures (Bruce Lee, John Wick) with the mythologies rooted in his ethnic identity. Read full review
67
The PlaylistMatthew MonagleMar 12, 2024
If the results are more than a little preachy, it’s only because Patel cares so passionately about the issues he spotlights and the cinematic language of violence he uses to discuss them. Read full review
63
PolygonOli WelshApr 12, 2024
In a way, Monkey Man’s lack of composure is the point, and after it’s over, it’s easy to see Patel as an action star, but hard to picture him slipping into the role of a smooth agent of the colonial order. Maybe Bond’s not what he should be doing after all. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Saffron MaeveApr 4, 2024
Patel is not reinventing the wheel here, nor is he establishing a coherent visual language to build upon in future films, but Monkey Man is cleverly castigating and proud of its lineage – a digestible bit of mythmaking with knife work to boot. Read full review
63
Washington PostTy BurrApr 4, 2024
Monkey Man seems hellbent on establishing itself as the latest wrinkle in post-Wickian cinema: nonstop mayhem featuring an actor previously thought of as a sweetie pie. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriApr 6, 2024
As an action flick, Monkey Man is often quite entertaining, but it keeps distracting you with images of the film it’s trying, and often failing, to be. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisApr 4, 2024
Patel does some fine work in Monkey Man even if its fight sequences rarely pop, flow or impress; they’re energetic but uninspired. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanMar 12, 2024
The movie has three extended action sequences, and I would have been happier if it had eight of them — that is, if it had less pretensions and, like the “Wick” films, was more willing to wear its pulp on its sleeve. Read full review
60
ColliderPerri NemiroffMar 12, 2024
Man is a true mixed bag. The action is staggeringly impressive, both from a visual and storytelling standpoint, but the material in between runs the risk of deflating the experience via pacing problems and narrative confusion. Read full review
60
The GuardianAdrian HortonMar 12, 2024
If you have the stomach for singularly focused revenge and some truly graphic, visceral hand-to-hand combat, Monkey Man delivers the goods. Read full review
55
The Daily BeastColeman SpildeMar 12, 2024
Though Monkey Man is exasperating, Patel’s work shows heart, love, and promise—something that can’t be said about many other action films. Read full review
50
ScreenCrushMatt SingerApr 11, 2024
Patel’s desire to make something more than a straightforward action film is admirable, especially since he had to juggle responsibilities in front of and behind the camera simultaneously to do so. Monkey Man suggests he’s got potential as a filmmaker in the future. In the present, his directorial debut is the sort of genre exercise that makes you realize creating a “straightforward” action movie is not so straightforward. Read full review
50
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenApr 10, 2024
Kudos to Patel for not making a dull vanity project for his feature directorial debut, but Monkey Man is still a rough watch of its own kind. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyApr 4, 2024
A date movie “Monkey Man” is not. Read full review
50
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaMar 12, 2024
Dev Patel’s diehard sincerity clashes with unwieldy religious imagery in an India-set revenge saga whose tepid action scenes fail to make up for its muddled politics. Read full review
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