While it’s the Year of the Dragon, spring 2024 is shaping up to be the Year of the Monkey. First there was the inaccurately named “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” which was mostly about Kong, an oversized gorilla. On 8 May 2024, the next installment in the reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” will be released. While those about fantasy primates, Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” takes its name from both a gorilla mask and a mythical figure: Hanuman.

As a directorial feature film debut, “Monkey Man” is a promising start. It’s well-paced, well-edited,  extremely violent tale of revenge. The story (by Patel, but screenplay credit shared with Paul Angunawela and John Collee (“Hotel Mumbai”)) is predictable, but if you like mindless violence where the bad guys get beaten in many different grotesque ways, this film is for you. Patel called it “an anthem for the underdogs, the voiceless and the marginalized.” That includes a trans woman, Alpha (Vipin Sharma) because Patel “really wanted to include the Hijra community, the third gender in India.”

While not as stylish as the John Wick saga, there is a dog involved (and it doesn’t die). However, it isn’t used to draw empathy from the viewers. It’s just a plot device as the unnamed protagonist plans his revenge. “Monkey Man” also deals with organized crime and corruption, but mostly we’re slumming it in grungy surroundings. The dirt, grime and low sanitation is real enough that Patel’s red eyes aren’t all makeup and special effects. Patel also required surgery for a broken hand. The pain is that real.

The film begins from a place of innocence, asking “So you know the story of Hanuman?” A mother is teaching her young son the myth of the trickster and warrior.

According to Britannica, Hanuman is the Hindu  “monkey commander of a monkey army.” As told in the Hindu Sanskrit poem the “Ramayana” (“Rama’s Journey”), “Hanuman led the monkeys to help Rama, an avatar (incarnation) of the god Vishnu, recover Rama’s wife, Sita, from the demon Ravana, king of Lanka (likely not the present-day Sri Lanka).”

This story, “Monkey Man,”  isn’t about the retrieval of a wife, but about the underclass and land wars. The titular character isn’t named. He’s the six-foot-two “Kid” (Dev Patel), who takes out his anger and survivor’s guilt by wearing a gorilla mask to be the loser in underground anything goes fights.

I do know that monkeys are “a nonhuman primate mammal” and apes are not monkeys.

• What’s the Difference Between Monkeys and Apes? 

Yet the Monkey Man, known as “The Beast” isn’t performing for people who care about that type of differentiation.

Before we see the fighters, we see the audience, cheering for their hero, King Cobra,  and jeering at the underdog, Monkey Man. These are brutal and bloody matches that continue even when blood spurts from the gorilla mask, but this is only the beginning.

As a child, the Kid witnessed the death of his mother, Neela (Adithi Kalkunte) by a corrupt police officer Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher) during the destruction of their small impoverished village. The Kid has a reminder; his hands are heavily burn scarred.

After setting into motion a team pickpocket targeting, Queenie,  the chain-smoking manager of the Kings Club, the Kid quickly infiltrates the posh club Kings Club, telling , Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar),  “Give me the job that no one wants to do.”

Queenie warns, “Anyone who talks outside these walls, anyone who forgets their place, it doesn’t go well for them.”

A glorified gofer, Alphonso (Pitobash), befriends the Kid and unwittingly becomes a pawn in the Kid’s mission. The King’s Club is a high-end brothel where, in special rooms, women, like Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala), are items on the menu.

Yet on this relentless journey toward revenge, there is little love and little wit, verbal or visual. There is a contrast between spiritual leaders, one an advisor to the rich, Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) who as “born into poverty but not held captive by it” and another, Alpha (Vipin Sharma) advises “I learned you need to destroy in order to grow.” The writers provide a window into Indian culture through these opposing spiritual leaders. While John Wick had love (and I’m not just talking about the dogs), he was also reluctant to return to violence. The Kid is raging for retribution, even if he initially hesitates. His hurt heart has no room for love, at least until he avenges his mother.

Yet, in this season of mythical apes making mayhem in alpha male mythic proportions, it is also disappointing that a film about Asian Indians should show violence as the solution to systemic inequities instead of harking back to the historic non-violent resistance movement.

I won’t pretend to understand the socio-political subtleties of Asian Indian society, but this film shows that Patel could be a James Bondian agent. Yet “Monkey Man” represents something better: An Asian Indian man trying to right the wrongs within his own society. Instead of a White hero righting the wrongs under a British, Australian or American flag, or a White man infiltrating and extracting someone like an Indian drug lord’s kidnapped son in Bangladesh (e.g. the 2020 action thriller “Extraction”), this film could be the origin story of someone who can pass as a local, using local lingo and connections and be a central character instead of an Asian sidekick or part of the scenery. The slickly edited pickpocket scenario that gives the Kid an excuse to meet Queenie suggests these possibilities.

“Monkey Man” isn’t a film that you see for the plott, but it is a promising first feature from Patel and perhaps the beginning of Patel as an action hero. “Monkey Man” premiered at South By Southwest on 11 March 2024 and was released in the US on 5 April 2024.