Dev Patel spent seven years developing Monkey Man, got a broken nose, multiple injuries, and a Netflix deal that then collapsed. Then Jordan Peele watched the film and made sure it got into theaters. The result was one of the more politically pointed action films of 2024, wrapped in the most effective possible commercial disguise: a John Wick-style revenge thriller about a man with a grudge and excellent fighting skills.

Classification: WOKE

WOKE 28 | TRADITIONAL 14 | Composite -14 WOKE

Confidence: HIGH

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SPOILER ALERT: This review contains detailed plot analysis, character descriptions, and reveals key story developments including the film's third act.

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Woke Trap Assessment

PARTIAL WOKE TRAP. The marketing for Monkey Man sold the action and the mythology — a young man in a monkey mask, bare-knuckle fighting for survival, driven by a mother's murder, echoing the Hanuman legend. For audiences who don't track Indian political controversies, this is what they saw: a well-choreographed revenge thriller with a compelling lead. But the film's actual content is an indictment of caste-based violence, religious nationalist politics, and police corruption, with the hijra community positioned as the hero's guardians and spiritual warriors. These are specific ideological choices that align with a very clear progressive politics of solidarity with marginalized communities against nationalist power structures.

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Creative Team at a Glance

• Director / Story: Dev Patel — first-time director, seven-year passion project, explicitly political intent stated in multiple interviews
• Lead Producers: Dev Patel, Jordan Peele (Monkeypaw), Basil Iwanyk (Thunder Road)
• Top Cast: Dev Patel (Kid), Sharlto Copley (Alphie Singh), Sobhita Dhulipala (Sita), Makarand Deshpande (Baba Shakur)
• Pre-Viewing Prediction: WOKE — Jordan Peele's involvement and the caste/religious nationalism subject matter made the direction clear before a frame was screened. Confirmed.
• Fidelity Casting: AUTHENTIC — Indian cast for Indian story.

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Plot Summary

Kid (Dev Patel) works underground fighting circuits in a fictional Indian city, wearing a gorilla mask, taking dives for money, absorbing punishment. He is a young man who is surviving, barely, with a plan that runs deeper than bare-knuckle boxing.

As a child, Kid watched his mother's village — a lower-caste community — burned to the ground by the police, orchestrated by a corrupt chief named Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher) who was acting under orders from Baba Shakur (Makarand Deshpande), a Hindutva-coded religious nationalist guru who controls both the local police and the political machinery. His mother died protecting him. Kid has been building toward revenge ever since.

He gets a job at the Sovereign Hotel — a playground for the elite, the corrupt, and the politically connected — working in the kitchen. Alphie Singh (Sharlto Copley) runs the hotel and the underground fights. Sita (Sobhita Dhulipala) is a sex worker at the hotel who becomes an unlikely ally. Kid begins working his way toward access to Rana Singh.

His early assassination attempt fails badly. He is beaten, nearly killed, and flees into the city's streets where he is found by the hijra community — transgender women and gender-nonconforming people who exist outside mainstream society, occupying a specific spiritual and social role in Indian culture. Their leader Alpha (Vipin Sharma) takes Kid in, allows him to heal, and trains him in a more sophisticated fighting method.

Restored and refocused, Kid returns to the Sovereign. The film's third act is a sustained, technically impressive series of action sequences as Kid methodically fights his way up through the hotel to Rana Singh and, ultimately, to Baba Shakur himself. The film's final image — Kid, victorious, alive — echoes the Hanuman myth Patel uses as his structural framework throughout.

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Trope Analysis — VVWS Weighted Scoring

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity x Authenticity Multiplier x Centrality Multiplier

Authenticity: High=0.7, Moderate=1.0, Low/Injected=1.4 | Centrality: Low=0.5, Moderate=1.0, High=1.8

Red Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity (1-5)	Auth	Centrality	Weighted Score
Caste Oppression as Central Villain Structure	4	1.0	1.8	7.2
Religious Nationalism as Political Evil	4	1.0	1.8	7.2
Hijra Community as Heroic Allies / Sanctuary	3	1.4	1.0	4.2
Police Complicity in Oppressive Violence	3	1.0	1.0	3.0
Marginalized Savant (hijra as spiritual warriors)	2	1.4	1.0	2.8
Corporate Elite as Corruption Engine	2	1.0	1.0	2.0
WOKE TOTAL	26.4

Green Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity (1-5)	Auth	Centrality	Weighted Score
Maternal Love and Sacrifice as Sacred	4	0.7	1.8	5.04
Vengeance as Justice Pursued by the Wronged	4	0.7	1.8	5.04
Religious Mythology as Heroic Framework (Hanuman)	3	0.7	1.0	2.1
Industry and Perseverance Through Suffering	2	0.7	1.0	1.4
TRAD TOTAL	13.58

Score Margin: -14 WOKE

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Director Track Record

Monkey Man is Dev Patel's directorial debut, so there is no prior directorial filmography to analyze. But his acting career and public statements offer a clear ideological signal.

Patel rose to fame in Slumdog Millionaire (2008), a film by Danny Boyle about poverty and the Mumbai underclass — not a conservative story. His subsequent choices — Skins (British youth drama), The Newsroom (Aaron Sorkin's liberal media valentine), Lion (a film about child displacement and adoption), The Green Knight (an arthouse Arthurian myth with decidedly non-triumphalist values) — cluster toward prestige productions with progressive cultural politics.

As a director, Patel has been explicit about his intentions for Monkey Man in a way that removes interpretive ambiguity. He has described the film as being about the weaponization of religion for political power, about caste violence, and about communities who survive at the margins of society. The hijra community's role was not an afterthought — Patel consulted with hijra communities during production and has spoken in interviews about wanting their depiction to be genuine and respectful.

Jordan Peele's involvement as champion and producer reinforces the signal. Peele does not attach himself to films for commercial reasons alone. His Monkeypaw Productions has a specific brand: socially engaged genre cinema about systemic oppression. His decision to go to bat for Monkey Man when Netflix dropped it was a statement about what the film was doing.

Pattern Assessment: First-time director with a seven-year passion project explicitly described as political in intent. Ideological tendency: PROGRESSIVE, anti-nationalist, pro-marginalized community solidarity. Clear and consistent.

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Full Cast

Actor	Role
Dev Patel	Kid / Bobby
Sharlto Copley	Alphie Singh
Sobhita Dhulipala	Sita
Pitobash	Alphie
Makarand Deshpande	Baba Shakur
Vipin Sharma	Alpha
Sikandar Kher	Rana Singh
Adithi Kalkunte	Kid's Mother
Ashwini Kalsekar	Queenie

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Adult Viewer Insight

Monkey Man is a technically impressive debut feature from a filmmaker who committed completely to his vision — physically, artistically, and politically. The fight choreography is genuinely inventive, informed by Kalaripayattu (an ancient Indian martial art) as well as the John Wick school of sustained single-location action design. Dev Patel is a credible action hero, which very few people would have predicted from Slumdog Millionaire. The film earns its visceral pleasures.

The political argument is real and should be understood. Baba Shakur is not a subtle villain. He is a direct analog for the kind of Hindu nationalist political figure who has become prominent in Indian politics over the past decade — a guru-politician who uses religious identity to organize violence against lower-caste communities, with police and political institutions as his enforcement arm. American conservatives who see this as irrelevant to their concerns should note that the film maps its Indian political dynamics explicitly onto universal arguments: religious institutions captured by nationalist politics become tools of violence; the marginalized who survive outside the system often retain moral clarity that the powerful have lost.

The hijra community's role is the element that will generate the most disagreement. They are portrayed with genuine dignity — not as comic relief or tragic figures but as a community with history, spiritual depth, and a practical knowledge of survival that the hero needs. For viewers who categorically reject any positive depiction of gender-nonconforming people, this will be an insurmountable barrier. For viewers willing to engage with the narrative on its own terms, the hijra community functions as an effective dramatic device: outsiders sheltering an outsider, the rejected restoring the rejected.

The maternal love story at the film's emotional center is unambiguously powerful and universal. Patel is clearly drawing from something personal. That emotional authenticity makes the film work as drama even when its politics are legible.

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Parental Guidance

Rated R for strong violence and language.

Violence — SEVERE:

• Sustained bare-knuckle fighting throughout the first act, with realistic injury depiction.
• The village massacre in flashback: police violence against civilians, burning, a child watching his mother die.
• Third-act hotel fight sequences: knife violence, improvised weapons, multiple on-screen deaths.
• The film's climactic violence is extended and brutal.

Language — MODERATE:

• F-word used regularly. Subtitled dialogue in Hindi.

Sexual Content:

• Sita is a sex worker; her profession is depicted without explicit scenes.
• The Sovereign Hotel's exploitation of sex workers is part of the corruption narrative.

Substance Use:

• Characters drink. No explicit substance abuse subplot.

Ideological Content for Parental Awareness:

• Caste-based oppression depicted as the film's primary moral evil.
• Religious nationalism depicted as organizing political violence.
• Hijra (transgender) community depicted as positive, protective figures.
• Police institutions depicted as instruments of corrupt political power.

Age Recommendation: 16+. The violence is sustained and realistic. The political content is sophisticated and requires context — particularly the Indian caste system and hijra community — that younger viewers are unlikely to have.

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Review by VirtueVigil Editorial Team | February 19, 2026

Monkey Man (2024) | Dir. Dev Patel | Universal / Peacock

VVWS Score: WOKE -14 | authIndex: 65

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Caste Oppression as Central Villain Structure	4	Moderate	High	7.2
Religious Nationalism as Political Evil	4	Moderate	High	7.2
Hijra Community as Heroic Allies and Spiritual Warriors	3	Low	Moderate	4.2
TOTAL WOKE				18.6

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Maternal Love and Sacrifice as Sacred	4	High	High	5.04
Vengeance as Justice for the Wronged	4	High	High	5.04
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				10.1

Score Margin: -14 WOKE