Dev Patel's Monkey Man Premieres at SXSW to Standing Ovation - What Critics Are Saying: "Forget John Wick"

At SXSW on Monday night, Dev Patel debuted something new in his already wide-ranging career: An action movie. But not just any action movie: An action movie he stars in, co-wrote, and for the first time, directed./p pAnd the audience could not get enough./p pAfter its world premiere at the Paramount Theater in Austin Monday, Patel took the stage while the credits rolled ona data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/monkey-man-dev-patel-jordan-peele-action-thriller-drops-first-trailer" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/monkey-man-dev-patel-jordan-peele-action-thriller-drops-first-trailer" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/monkey-man-dev-patel-jordan-peele-action-thriller-drops-first-trailer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"emMonkey Man/em/a, his directorial debut, and soaked in what turned out to be a data-entity-href="https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1767416316112068623" data-entity-title="https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1767416316112068623" href="https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1767416316112068623" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"a two-minute standing ovation/a as more than 1,000 moviegoers cheered the film. An emotional Patel soaked it all in, celebrating the reveal of a labor of love that he'd been working on since before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down production./p p/pdiv class="embed-code-other embed-code-youtube"iframe loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" src="about:blank" data-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g8zxiB5Qhsc?si=E_-e-NethclGtqQc" class="optanon-category-13" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen style="width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 560 / 315;"/iframe/div pBut the love didn't stop at the theater doors. Critics immediately began heaping on praise on Patel's film, a revenge drama set in India about a lowly fighter who seeks to topple the corrupt officials who killed his mother. Here's what just a few of them have said aboutemMonkey Man/emso far./p h2What Critics Are Saying About Dev Patel's emMonkey Man/em/h2 p“emMonkey Man/em is bloody and intense," a data-entity-href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/monkey-man-movie--review-2024" data-entity-title="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/monkey-man-movie--review-2024" href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/monkey-man-movie--review-2024" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com/a wrote. "Bones break, blood spurts, and you feel the connection in ways you don’t often in action lately—even the good stuff has gone more highly-choreographed like emJohn Wick/emor emMission: Impossible/em. While the choreography here is still phenomenal, there’s a sweaty, improvised quality to it that adds to its kinetic thrust. It’s impossible to look away or know what’s coming next."/p p"In these scenes, however gruesome, Patel becomes his own hero, embodying the kind of smooth valor he’s always admired," a data-entity-href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/monkey-man-review-dev-patel-1235849364/" data-entity-title="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/monkey-man-review-dev-patel-1235849364/" href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/monkey-man-review-dev-patel-1235849364/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"Lovia Gyarkye wrote in The Hollywood Reporter/a./p div data-embed-button="media" data-entity-embed-display="view_mode:media.embed" data-entity-embed-display-settings="[]" data-entity-type="media" data-entity-uuid="60cce31c-7574-447c-ab5c-88dd1977deef" data-langcode="en" class="embedded-entity"div class="media__image" style="max-width:862px" div class="media__image-wrapper" div div img loading="lazy" decoding="async" fetchpriority="low" src="https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/scale_862/public/2024/03/gettyimages-2077264913.jpg" width="862" height="575" alt="Jordan Peele and Dev Patel smile together at SXSW." typeof="foaf:Image" /div /div /div div class="media__metadata" div class="media__metadata-wrapper" span class="media__caption" Jordan Peele and Dev Patel attend as Universal Pictures presents the SXSW premiere of "Monkey Man" at The Paramount Theater on March 11, 2024 in Austin, Texas. /span span class="media__credit"Photo: Roger Kisby/Getty Images for Universal Pictures /span /div /div /div /div p"The highest highs are frankly extraordinary," a data-entity-href="https://www.slashfilm.com/1537468/monkey-man-review-dev-patel-sxsw/" data-entity-title="https://www.slashfilm.com/1537468/monkey-man-review-dev-patel-sxsw/" href="https://www.slashfilm.com/1537468/monkey-man-review-dev-patel-sxsw/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"Jacob Hall wrote at Slashfilm/a. "I can't help but feel Patel's first-time-director energy, that 'I may never get to do this again' vibe that pulsates throughout the film and leads to its overstuffed plate, doesn't allow it to fully take flight. The good news is that Patel is clearly going to work again. He's just getting started."/p pstrongRELATED: a data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/monkey-man-dev-patel-jordan-peele-movie-super-bowl-teaser" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/monkey-man-dev-patel-jordan-peele-movie-super-bowl-teaser" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/monkey-man-dev-patel-jordan-peele-movie-super-bowl-teaser" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"Super Bowl Trailer foremMonkey Man/em/a/strong/p pstrongRELATED:a data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/green-knight-movie-david-lowery-fantasy-masterpiece" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/green-knight-movie-david-lowery-fantasy-masterpiece" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/green-knight-movie-david-lowery-fantasy-masterpiece" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"emThe Green Knight/emis the Next Great Fantasy Masterpiece/a/strong/p p"Though he’s done other interesting work, namely the recent emGreen Knight/em, this is the moment that feels like he is reintroducing himself on his own terms and with the film he has shaped most," Chase Hutchinson wrote a data-entity-href="https://www.thewrap.com/dev-patel-monkey-man-review/" data-entity-title="https://www.thewrap.com/dev-patel-monkey-man-review/" href="https://www.thewrap.com/dev-patel-monkey-man-review/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"at TheWrap/a. "That shape may be beaten to a pulp, but it couldn’t be any other way. Just as Kid is reborn in the film, so too is Patel. It requires fighting a bloody battle, but what a beautiful sight it is to see. Forget John Wick, let no one doubt the power of action star Dev Patel again."/p pA love letter to Patel's lifelong obsession with action movies,emMonkey Man/emis the story of Kid, who digs deep into a quest for revenge that's been decades-in-the-making, using every tool at his disposal along the way. Brutal, fast-paced, and filled with references to action cinema that genre fans are sure to love, it's the kind of movie that will play great with a crowd, so don't see it alone./p pstrongemMonkey Man/emhits theaters Apr. 5. Get tickets now./strong/p