The story of how Monkey Man came to be seen by anyone is a narrative about power, capital, and the cowardice of corporations that underscores the themes of the film in a metatextual way. Initially intended to be released on Netflix, that organization was planning to shelve the film, as its straightforward criticism of Hindu nationalism in India, which is gaining power in a time of rising fascism globally, was considered inappropriate while Netflix is courting international expansion into the subcontinent. The film was seen by Jordan Peele, who flexed his not-inconsiderable muscle to get Monkey Man released theatrically stateside, and it’s now available for digital purchase as well. The film itself—directed by, produced by, and starring Dev Patel—follows a fairly straightforward narrative of revenge, but one which is wrapped up in political and state violence and the corruption of faith by seekers of power.

As a child, our protagonist, who is given no name other than “Kid,” lived in a village that was razed to the ground by corrupt police officer—redundant, I know—Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher), under the direction of Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande). Shakti is a widely respected faith leader whose apparent religious devotion is a cover for his ever-expanding empire of factories, which he claims to the press are simply “communes,” and the destruction of Kid’s home is merely one in a long line of such actions, where the survivors are either forced to flee or become little more than chattel slaves in the factories that are built over the land they once called home. Like most murderous and fanatical entities, like (for instance) the Zionist terrorist state, they arrive with “records” that indicate these sites “historically” belong to someone else, and that the land is being “returned,” and in so doing rape, pillage, burn, and murder innocents while pretending that they are offering them the opportunity to flee. Now an adult, Kid scrapes by in an underground kickboxing ring as Monkey Man, the monkey-masked “heel” who puts on a good show before taking the fall against “face” characters like King Cobra, Shere Khan, and Baloo the Bear. The monkey mask means something different to him, however, as it represents his connection to Hanuman, a Hindu deity who was the subject of his mother’s devotion. The film opens as he prepares for his roaring rampage of revenge, setting up the theft of the handbag of Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar), the foul-mouthed owner-operator of a luxury brothel called Kings, then returning it to her with a sufficiently believable cover story and rejecting her offer of a cash reward in exchange for a job.

From there, he ingratiates himself to Queenie’s henchman Alphonso (Pitobash) by giving him inside information about the kickboxing matches, and he works his way up to a penthouse party that Singh is attending. He manages to almost complete his assassination of the man, but his impulsive need to deliver an action hero one liner to Singh, “Blessings from my mother,” allows an opening for the officer to get the upper hand. A wounded Kid flees and falls into a polluted river, where he would have died were he not rescued by a group of hijra, a community of transgender, intersex, or eunuch people who live communally (and in some nations in South Asia are recognized officially and legally as a third gender). Earlier in the film, during a broadcast that Kid watches after taking another dive in the ring, the TV cuts from a journalist’s softball interview with Shakti to coverage of anti-trans violence at the hands of right-wing agitators, although, as with media in the west, their failure to make a connection between the two stories is a deliberate obfuscation of that connection. Alpha (Vipin Sharma), the guru of the hijra community, nurses Kid back to health, and the community at large helps renew his vigor as he approaches another opportunity to take down both Singh and Shakti.

Taken at nothing more than face value, this is a fun action movie, where the choreography of the fighting is absolutely stellar. The film references its most overt influence, John Wick, on its sleeve by mentioning the film by name, but Patel has cited Korean action flicks Ajeossi (aka The Man from Nowhere) and I Saw the Devil as well. I haven’t seen the former, and, unfortunately, it’s been so long since I saw the latter that my memory isn’t clear enough to pull out specific influences. The action here is stunning, with long sequences that remain exciting through a combination of dynamic camera work, novel shot choices, exciting locations, and the kind of frenetic energy that feels like speeding. There’s a bathroom brawl that’s the equal of, if not better than, the one in M.I.: Fallout, and the sequence there is a franchise highlight. A flight from police on foot and then via electric rickshaw (complete with a Fast & Furious style NOS-injector) is a ton of fun, and the final assault on Kings owes a lot to The Raid—that certainly wasn’t the first film to have our protagonist(s) take out a building floor by floor as they approached their boss battle, but it arguably perfected it. This comes off not as a compilation or recitation of hits, but as something exciting and worthwhile in and of itself, and even if that’s all that one takes from it, this is still a great action movie.

I appreciate the depth of this one, though, and I especially love the way that the hijra are treated with respect and dignity, and that they get to fulfill an important narrative role in the story not just as the community that nursed the hero back to health and was saved by him in the end, but that they get to be the cavalry that backs him up when all seems lost. Queerness in India isn’t something that I have a scholarly knowledge of, obviously, but I have been privy to anecdotes, and I think that there is something in the nature of fascism that tells on itself in the discrepancy between the homophobias here and abroad. In the U.S. and the larger West, the supremacy of fundamentalist Christian politics plays a key role in instilling, inscribing, and disguising bigotry in the hearts and minds of the populace — that is, being queer is wrong because (their reading of) their scripture says so. In India, even though the population is predominantly Hindu and fundamentalist Hindu politics are a key role in that nation’s contemporary authoritarianism, Hinduism and the texts thereof are full of queer deities and heroes that are absent from the canonized Old and New Testaments. Fire god Agni had a husband and a wife and there are tales that explicitly reference him having sexual encounters with men; Ardhanarishvara (whose temple is attended by Alpha and the other hijra in the film) is a split-down-the-middle merging of Shiva and his consort Parvati; and many others characters like Shikhandi and Arjuna are transformed between sex and gender. There’s no “scriptural basis” (as we would call it in the West) for the homophobia and transphobia of the rising right wing where Monkey Man takes place, but it still happens because those bigotries are inherent to fascism, not to faith. You’re not going to see a movie made in the West where a group of transwomen get to be the cavalry that rescues the hero outside of the occasional shoestring-budgeted envelope pusher, but you can see it here, and that’s lovely.

The only thing that really doesn’t fit here is the presence of the love interest, Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala). There’s a reason that we’ve gotten this far without mentioning her. Sita is one of the sex workers employed at Kings, and the fact that she seems to be Singh’s favorite is made known does little to affect motivation or characterization — with Kid already seeking to kill Singh for assaulting and murdering his mother, there’s no real need to give him additional reasons to want the man dead, and in fact muddles things a little. Her major contribution to the film is that she’s the one who takes out Queenie so that we don’t have to see our hero shoot a woman, and that means she’s more plot point than character. Other than that, however, this is just about a perfect action film, and one with a lot going on under the surface, which it draws attention to through its continuous motif of roots; Kid’s mother shows him the roots of the trees in and around their village and teaches him about their spiritual significance; the people who are threatened with being forcibly relocated, including Kid’s community and the hijra are implicitly and explicitly being uprooted, and the temple in which Alpha and their people live is one with roots that run deeper than a man is tall. As a text and an action film, this one is definitely rewarding and worth seeking out.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond