The 5th Monkey

The 5th Monkey is a Brazilian-American 1990 drama film directed and written by Éric Rochat and starring Ben Kingsley. The film was based on the novel Le Cinquieme Singe by Jacques Zibi. The Cannon Group founder Menahem Golan produced via his 21st Century Film Corporation, following the demise of Cannon.

The 5th Monkey
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Éric Rochat
Written by	Éric Rochat Jacques Zibi (novel)
Produced by	Menahem Golan
Starring	Ben Kingsley Silvia De Carvalho Mika Lins Vera Fischer
Cinematography	Gideon Porath
Edited by	Alain Jakubowicz Fabien D. Tordjmann
Music by	Robert O. Ragland
Production company	21st Century Film Corporation
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	October 5, 1990 (1990-10-05)
Running time	93 minutes
Countries	United States Brazil
Language	English

The original music score was composed by Robert O. Ragland.

Plot

Cunda (Kingsley) lives deep in the Brazilian rainforest and is intent on making enough money so he can marry a widow in his village. However, his trade - capturing snakes for scientists - pays very little money, and he is in direct competition with other suitors.

One day, Cunda is bitten by a snake, and he crawls to the river to recover. While going through the agonizing recovery, he has an hallucination of four chimpanzees sitting in the river. Recovered, he returns home and finds the four chimpanzees waiting for him, and his efforts to shoo them away fail. Knowing that chimpanzees are not native to Brazil, he decides that they are a kind of supernatural gift for him. Believing this, he decides to take them to "the city" to sell them.

The journey isn't easy from the start; he discovers that he can't tie them on a rope and drag them, and the only way is to coax them. They stumble into a gold-panning camp, where Cunda is forced to work in order to pay off an old debt. When one of the "monkeys" (chimpanzees) is taken as payment, Cunda must figure how to retrieve him and escape. Later, he, the chimps and the adults of a village are kidnapped by mercenaries. Cunda and the chimps escape, along with a village woman who refuses to leave his side. Arriving at a small town, a confusing sequence results in one of the chimps disappearing, and Cunda becoming the servant of the local rich woman who has taken it upon herself to take care of the chimps. Cunda now has to solve these two problems, and deal with the fact of the village woman's attraction to him plus his growing fondness for the chimpanzees he holds captive.

Cast

• Ben Kingsley as Cunda
• Silvia De Carvalho as Maria
• Mika Lins as Octavia
• Vera Fischer as Mrs. Watts

External links

• The 5th Monkey at IMDb
• The 5th Monkey at Rotten Tomatoes
• The 5th Monkey at AllMovie