New Release! The Art of Self-Defense (2019)

No Spoilers. Read Away!

Director: Riley Stearns

A highly effective dark comedy in the vein of Repo Man, Sorry to Bother You, and other great social satires that create their own worlds around a single young man being suffocated by the warped worlds that surround them.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Casey, a rather quiet, skittish accountant who lives alone with his dachshund and does his best to stay out of other people's way. After being brutally mugged and nearly killed one night by a roving band of motorcycle thugs, Casey decides to take up karate at a local dojo. The dojo is run by an extremely intense trainer, known to us only as "Sensei" (Alessandro Nivola), who feels that karate contains everything that one requires to live a fulfilling life. The rather impressionable Casey quickly devotes himself to the dojo, growing ever more confident and violent as he continues to train. As he rises in the esteem of Sensei, however, it becomes clear that there is something much darker going on at the dojo and among some of its students.

This movie won't be for everyone, just like any dark satire. It operates on its own wavelength, simplifying and distilling its elements in order to create an altered reality which is clearly not meant to be an accurate representation of the world which we really live in. Like any good satire, though, it does an excellent job in honing in on the subject of its commentary - in this case, toxic masculinity - and giving us plenty of great laughs along the way. One just needs to realize that the humor is very much of a satirical nature: dark, dry, and making liberal use of oversimplifying very real facets of society in order to draw us down the paths of their logical conclusions.

Casey, under the tutelage of his eerily intense sensei, puts
everything he has into becoming a lethal practitioner of
karate. This includes hard work and listening to metal.

Like any well done satire, this movie isn't for everyone. In fact, I could tell that more than a few viewers around my wife and me seemed a bit perplexed by the film. "I thought this was supposed to be a comedy," stated one semi-confused fellow. And more than once, my wife and I were among only a few people laughing at what, to us, were obviously meant to be moments of dark humor.  If one isn't picking up the vibe of the movie, it will seem very strange; twisted, even. For those who lock in, though, it provides some thoughtful commentary and plenty of laughs to go along with the rather brutal and violent shocks.

As an aside, we were treated to a post-show Q-and-A with the Austin-based writer/director Riley Stearns (very much to my wife's and my surprise), and he seemed a very thoughtful, talented, and rather grounded young director. I'll be keeping my eyes out for what he does next, as The Art of Self-Defense is a really strong piece of work.