Why does Monkey Man talk about John Wick?

Seventeen minutes into Monkey Man, the main character enters a seedy, underground gun shop, looking to equip himself for an upcoming act of revenge. The man in charge pulls a lever, and a wall covered in different types of firearms lights up: handguns, old-fashioned rifles, high-tech modern assault weapons; all displayed under lights, like tempting treats.

"You like John Wick?" he asks, pulling out a black pistol and aiming it playfully at The Kid's forehead. "'Cause this just came in. Same gun from the movie, but made in China."

Monkey Man is, ostensibly, an action movie that takes a lot of inspiration from the John Wick franchise: a story of a man, driven by revenge and possessing unnaturally cool fighting ability, cutting a bloody path through the ranks and bodies of the powerful. The marketing material is cut in a way that invites such comparisons, likely to capture the same fanbase. A quick search online will give you the phrase "Indian John Wick" and links to Wick trailers re-cut to resemble Patel's film. So it's a joke; it's a nod; it's something for Captain America and Leonardo DiCaprio to point at in satisfied shock.

But the film is careful and considered, and otherwise not prone to flights of referential fantasy. If it talks about John Wick, it wants you to think about John Wick.

This is not for you

The Kid (who is never named) ends up buying a very basic six-shot revolver. There's no emotional or tactical decisions at play here, it's the most he can afford. A Wick-style smorgasbord of weapons is teased and then ignored for the rest of the film. Our protagonist will never have access to an arsenal, he will never be in complete control of his surroundings or pocket an advantage. Even at the climax of the film, with an army of like-minded fighters on his side and a plan to take down the powerful evils at play, The Kid's greatest weapons are street-sale fireworks, kitchen knives, and fists.

Bringing up John Wick becomes a strong statement of purpose, as Monkey Man develops into a commentary about an unfair society and the disadvantaged groups oppressed by it. The poor, lower classes and social outcasts can never solve problems the way John Wick characters do, they simply don't have the resources, the social positioning, the connections.

John Wick, after all, is a privileged person. He lives in an incredibly expensive house (before someone blows it up) and drives increasingly expensive muscle cars (before they get stolen or blown up); he wears designer suits that would cost enough even without being bulletproof, which he wears to lavish parties thrown by stylish criminals. The first movie explains that John quit his job as a cool assassin after making an unfathomable fortune and sealing it in concrete in the basement of his fancy house. John's first act when returning to his role as Baba Yaga is to unearth a box of cool guns and gold coins, which he then takes to the Continental 5-Star Assassin Hotel and Grill to exchange for even more guns. The short, stubby arm of the law functionally does not exist for John Wick and his supporting cast, as they commit heinous crimes and are punished internally, if at all. Murder Club has completed an internal investigation and found no misconduct by Murder Club.

In comparison, The Kid is immediately and permanently an outsider in a society that actively hates him. He was born to a poor family, then orphaned by the ruling powers as they stole land from a persecuted religious minority. For much of the film he is either the heel in an underground fight club (paid a pittance to be hated by the crowd and lose to the popular fighter) or a waiter. In both instances he is made invisible by his place in society: as a fighter, because of the dehumanising monkey mask he's forced to wear; as waiting staff, by virtue of serving a class of people that would barely notice a service worker existed in the first place.

Kid's origins draw a salt barrier around his associations and his field of influence, limiting his options and relationships where John Wick had unlimited freedom. There's a dog involved, again inviting a direct nostalgia for Wick. The Kid's dog is not a parting gift from a loving spouse, however, but an equally put-upon stray in an alley. Kid feeds the dog, and seems to see himself in it, but ultimately it is repurposed into a useful tool in his plans for revenge. Like the revolver, the dog is a necessity, as there's no room in The Kid's life for something to exist as simple metaphor.

Allies to The Kid's cause are other persecuted people, fellow workers, sex workers and—most notably—hijra. The latter is a word used to describe a community of trans, intersex and eunuch people in India, a group seen as low status and kept at the fringes of society. It's no coincidence that a group of people shunned by the public and demonised by power becomes the fearsome front line of Kid's attack on his upper-class enemies.

Rules versus rage

It's a bit reductive to consider the class contrast between Monkey Man and John Wick as just circumstance, or cultural difference. The Kid wouldn't suddenly transform into Keanu Reeves if you gave him a box of gold coins. But the socioeconomic positioning gives the film a solid foundation for its actual thesis, which is how those without power should conduct themselves. How they should react to injustice, how they should act in the presence of power, what is appropriate.

The big, interesting comparison between Wick and Monkey, past the suits and the guns, is philosophy.

Spiritually speaking, John Wick is cold and calculating. His motives are emotional, but the methods and the setting encourage an intellectual approach. There are rules in the Wick universe; if you follow them you'll be rewarded, if you break them you'll die horribly. This extends even to the moments where John is experiencing injustice, as the end result is always that John himself will punish the offenders. We're using 'rules' in the broader sense here, the idea that the world works a certain way, and individuals are responsible for their actions within that cosmic ruleset. Wick films consequently have a very existentialist mindset, and rely on those constraints to tell their stories. It's like a roller coaster: no matter how crazy things get, the audience knows there are rails underneath their feet that govern the way things should turn out in the end.

There are no rules in the world of Monkey Man, just powerful people building cages for everyone else. Doing as you're told and sticking to your proper place gets you nothing but more oppression, smaller boundaries, greater suffering. Where Wick's powerful enemies are those with greater ability, and more resources, they are rarely shown to victimise those less powerful; antagonists in Monkey Man are brutal monsters who owe everything they have to the work of the oppressed and downtrodden.

With this catastrophically unfair setup, there's no value in an intellectual chess game. It's rigged, it will always be rigged. The Kid gains nothing by following the rules, and it's repeatedly shown that he only makes progress when using tactics his enemies would describe as cheating, or savage. So the events of Monkey Man aren't justice like on the Wick side of the coin; they're anger. Pure, unfiltered, cathartic rage at a world that is controlled by people who love power and hate the poor, the sick, the different. The central framing of the main character as the titular Monkey Man—the persona he takes on while wearing the monkey mask in the ring and taking his beatings like a good employee—is designed at first to show the horrid state of his existence, but over time is revealed to be an answer to a broader question. What are the oppressed supposed to do to end their suffering? What path do you get to follow when you don't have a box of gold in your basement?

Partway through the film, The Kid fully embraces the Monkey Man persona, bleaching his mask white (to match artistic depictions of the mythological Hanuman) and using the terrifying visage to spark his raid on the centre of power. This is a co-opting of the symbol of his lower social status, but it's also an embrace of something he seems to be fighting against in that early scene in the gun shop. He needs to embrace the beast in himself, which he works to repress for much of the film, and unleash fury upon the corrupt systems of the world. The beast tears everything down.

This works because Monkey Man's focus is not on the singular power of a charismatic and talented Keanu Reeves. It isn't a story about one man raging against an unfair world to kill a couple of bad guys. Monkey Man is about everyone who suffers under the regime: the poor, the followers of banned religions, the lower class employees, the sex workers, the hijra. The first act of the film explicitly demonstrates that The Kid's desire for individual revenge is both doomed to failure and philosophically empty. It isn't until his defeat, where he takes the time to learn from and be supported by the many, many others who are also victims of power, that he can actually find the strength to finish the fight. The film presents revenge through the lens of anger, but it suggests justice only comes with community.

There's something very comforting about stories of revenge, since they all suggest some form of fantastical world where one person truly can make a difference and partly reverse some nightmarish outcome. Or at least punish the guilty. Monkey Man's pointed mention of John Wick is deftly used to suggest and then loudly deny that kind of clean outcome. The Kid gets his revenge as well, technically, but the film is deliberately vague about further outcomes; we never learn what happened to the other character, if The Kid survives his own injuries, if the events of the plot made even a small dent in the oppressive social order. But the anger remains justified regardless, and sits in the guts of the audience as the credits roll.

It wants you to feel the rage and take it with you. The world is a rotten pyramid of horrors, owned by a cabal of soulless kings, and there's no John Wick coming to set things right. Doesn't that make you really, really angry?