Based on a 2013 novel by Carl Hiaasen, this humorous 10-part crime thriller on Apple TV+ breezes along with a fantastic cast Vince Vaughn in 'Bad Monkey'. Photo: Apple TV+ Vince Vaughn and Natalie Martinez in 'Bad Monkey'. Photo: Apple TV+ Meredith Hagner and Rob Delaney in 'Bad Monkey'.
Photo: Apple TV+ It’s fashionable to dismiss Vince Vaughn. Even if you can overlook those awful fratboy comedies he made (and for a long time he seemed to make little else), there’s the thorny issue of his politics. In contrast to Democrat-voting stars like George Clooney and Robert De Niro, Vaughn is an outspoken libertarian.
He supported right-wing Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 elections, and his even more right-wing son Rand Paul in 2016. He’s opposed to gun control, supports carrying firearms in public and has called for guns in schools. But if you can hold your nose and look past all this — and paying audiences have been doing just that for decades with Hollywood’s most famous libertarian, Clint Eastwood — Vaughn, when given the right material, can be excellent.
He was outstanding in the criminally underrated second season of True Detective, which most critics hammered for daring to do something different from its predecessor, and hilarious in Freaky, a horror spin on Freaky Friday, playing a terrifying serial killer who swaps bodies with a teenage girl. Bad Monkey — Official Trailer Ten-part humorous crime thriller Bad Monkey (Apple TV+, first two episodes on Wednesday, August 14) presents Vaughn with the perfect material. It’s based on a 2013 novel by Carl Hiaasen, the natural heir to the great Elmore Leonard and the supreme chronicler of Florida’s sun-kissed underworld, populated by grifters, gougers, grotesques, eccentrics, murderers, blackmailers, extortionists, corrupt politicians, dirty developers and the occasional knight in tarnished armour — or at least a slightly crumpled floral shirt.
The one wearing the shirt is the irreverent Andrew Yancy (Vaughn), a Miami detective who lives on the Florida Keys. Yancy was suspended from duty for ramming a golf cart driven by the abusive husband of a woman he’s been having an affair with (Michelle Monaghan) and pushing it off a pier. Yancy still has his gun and his badge, but he’s forbidden from using either.
He’s been demoted to the job of restaurant inspector — “the roach patrol”, as he calls it — and is desperate to get his real job back. All he has to do is stay out of trouble and keep his head down until the dust settles. But, of course, trouble has a habit of seeking Yancy out, while he has a habit of not walking away from it while he still has time.
In Bad Monkey, the trouble arrives when a man’s severed arm is reeled in by a honeymooner on his first-ever fishing trip. Whoever the arm was attached to was giving someone the middle finger just before he expired, and rigor mortis has kept the digit aloft. Yancy’s former partner and best buddy Rogelio (John Ortiz) tells him the police chief has a simple job that will help get him back in the department’s good books.
All he has to do is deliver the arm, which is being kept on ice, to Dade County medical examiner Natalie Martinez (Rosa Campesino), in the hope she’ll find evidence linking the arm to unsolved crimes in the district, thereby taking a case that has the potential to damage the Keys’ tourist trade off their hands. When no link is found, Rogelio tells Yancy to dump the arm in the water. Instead, he decides to take it home and keep it in the freezer.
Meredith Hagner and Rob Delaney in 'Bad Monkey'. Photo: Apple TV+ A woman called Eve Stripling (Meredith Hagner) returns from holiday in Europe and confirms that the severed arm is that of her husband Nick, who it is assumed died in a boating accident. A funeral is held for the arm, but Yancy suspects Eve is faking her grief.
His doubts increase when Nick’s daughter from a previous marriage, Caitlin (Charlotte Lawrence), who hates her stepmother, tells him she’s convinced Eve murdered Nick. Meanwhile, on the island of Andros in the Bahamas, a young fisherman called Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet), who owns the bad monkey of the title, is trying to hang onto his beachfront house, which is about to be bulldozed by a shady developer called Christopher Grunion (Rob Delaney), who just happens to be Eve’s boyfriend. The intertwining plots are neatly tied together by a droll, witty voiceover from Tom Nowicki as the owner of the fishing boat that picked up the arm.
Bad Monkey breezes along entertainingly, anchored by the performance of an ideally cast Vaughn in terrific form. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
