Sophomoric feature film of US director/writer Riley Stearns, himself in real life is a practitioner and instructor of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE gets the jumping-off point right there.
Eisenberg is in his usual saddo form as the lonesome Casey, a 35-year-old accountant has no one but a pet dachshund for company. After being savagely mugged one night by a motorcycle gang, he balks at going out at night, and tries to buy a firearm for self protection but ends up in a dojo where karate is instructed by the upright Sensei (Nivola).
Beginning as a tabula rasa white-belt, Casey apparently makes goodly progress and soon earns his yellow-belt and gets an invitation to the night class, where the training becomes more combative, he witness Anna (Poots) mercilessly beats up fellow student Thomas (Terada) after losing a promotion to black-belt to him, and another student Henry (Zellner) has his arm viciously broken for attending the class unheralded, a sinister vibe of hierarchy and sexism rightly supersedes the hitherto more lighthearted tone, to say nothing of the wanton violence on show.
Motivated by Sensei, Casey successfully morphs from a beta male to an alpha one (even if it costs him his job), or he eagerly pretends to be. After socking an innocent lush under the insistent instruction of Sensei, he begins to have doubts (why Sensei keeps filming him with his camcorder for his assault?), and in the wake of his pet’s premature death (dachshund is deemed not masculine enough for a man), an action betrays the evil-doer’s rashness and inopportuneness, and an accident of barbaric battery that he literally clocks a plainclothes policeman to death, Casey needs to burrow into the 411 (including the belated revelation that Sensei and his co. are actually his attackers) and face a final showdown with Sensei. Only this time, he will not play by the honor-bound rules, the brainwashing needs to be put paid to, once and for all.
Bracingly, the story mines into the touch-paper issue of toxic masculinity, a ubiquitous stigma breeding on the male sex and should be answerable for a big chunk of the scourge that plays havoc among human species, but Stearns’ troubling standing on the gun control (it is such an ill-conceived decision for the clincher occurs like that in the movie), that obfuscates itself with the “guns are for the weak” message and the rising-of-an-underdog trope, takes some shine off its offbeat, effervescent veneer, and when Casey finally vouchsafes a new leadership to the sole member of the weaker sex, it is too condescending an ending to stomach, however good Stearns’ intention is, yet, that ill feeling is thankfully alleviated by Poots’ steely resolution and undimmed asperity, only if the film could allocate more room to dwell on Anna’s story, that’s why we need female filmmakers now more than ever.
Shot in an overtly frugal budget with subdued lighting, mostly interior, THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE’s most prudent movie is to assign a charismatic Nivola the role of Sensei, the amiable mentor figure who can simultaneously telegraph earnestness and dispassionateness in the same breath, despite of Sensei’s blinkered bigotry, we cannot blame Casey for knuckle under his mental indoctrination because Nivola makes him impossible to resist, even after we are fully convinced that he is the bane of any sane being’s life, on the off chance, we still wish he might have some justification up in his sleeves. Slowly evolving into one of the most versatile actors of his generation, Nivola has his brilliance seep into Sensei’s every ruthless action, manipulative ploy and assertive delivery, could he be a cult leader, devotees would be come running.
In toto, the film is a black comedy welded with a frivolous brutality that might be queasy for some to watch, but underneath everything, it is a magical realism allegory about the prototype of dichotomic masculinity, gives the lie to its poisonous core but runs away with a quirky conceitedness that needs some modulation.
referential entries: David Zellner’s KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER (2014, 6.8/10); Richard Ayoade’s THE DOUBLE (2013, 6.1/10).
