Written and directed by Riley Stearns

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola, Imogen Poots

The Art of Self- Defense is a darker than usual dark comedy. The humor is extreme deadpan mixed with obvious to the point observations. There are a lot of pauses in its story beats, and the film takes a while to get where it’s going. But finally, yes, does comes back to all the elements it introduces.  

Jesse Eisenberg has long overstayed his welcome these days. Of course everyone remembers his great performance as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, but that has led to a series of low end films that continually feature him and continually are not seen by most of the public. How many movies has he been in lately that no one has seen? I think The Art of Self Defense will break this pattern. He’s finally good again, in the right role for him.

He plays Casey Davies, a weak mannered accountant. The beginning finds him alone in a coffee shop, as a french couple mock him from across the room. Even his walk is weak. At work he wants to join the conversation of his co-workers hating on their boss, even though he is friends with him. They ooze a masculine nature, and immediately reject Casey. He eyes a magazine one of them has. 

He goes home to his little daschund, who eyes him longingly. They’re out of dog food. On the walk to the store, Casey is beaten brutally by a motorcycle gang. It leaves him in the hospital, with his dog sitting with him on his bed. He’s afraid to go back to work. He’s afraid to do most things now. He goes to buy a gun. This scene is a pretty funny one, and seems to be anti-gun, but might contradict later events in the film. Casey can’t buy a gun to protect himself that same day. He’s gotta wait the waiting period. 

Unsure what to do, he wanders into a nearby dojo, and witnesses Karate lessons being taught. This will be his new protection. The sensei of the dojo (Alessandro Nivola) is the most deadpan of all. Speaking hilariously untrue statements as if they were fact without so much as a smirk. He is stoic, but has the air of someone villainous. Casey sees him as a mentor.

The movie from this point has a  lot of fun with the hierarchy of Karate, and all the toxic masculinity such a thing could carry. There’s only one woman at the dojo (Imogen Poots), she’s relegated to teaching the children. She has a brown belt, but you get the feeling she’s way better than that. The colors and tapes of the belt make for great laughs, and cool symbolism. 

There’s a lot in the movie about male relationships. Casey admits he is scared to be around other men. He’s teased for being too effeminate, weak, not tough enough. All the other men here are sickeningly masculine. Borderline homoerotic, and raging, and violent. Toxic masculinity indeed. And that magazine from earlier? He makes copies of it in secret. In it are pictures of tits, and guns, and all the other things men are supposed to care about. As Casey ascends to yellow belt, so too does the dark nature and violence of the film. It snaps from a comedy to deeply disturbing around this point, and becomes a lot more intriguing. It still is funny, and finds its unthinkable laughs over and over. The scene where Casey orders belts for the dojo is genius, and the movie keeps that gag going as long as it can. 

I like the lore this movie establishes within itself. About the former grandmaster, and his technique and subsequent passing. And the belts and tapes, and the way the dojo is run is straight out of Fight Club. Maybe the movie takes place in the 90s because that’s when Fight Club came out. The Raymond K. Hessel scene from Fincher’s film has resonated so much with Riley Stearns (the writer/director) that it obviously serves as the driving point for this whole story. It’s referenced time and time again. It might be the whole point of the movie. 

But I like that Stearns picks a side here, and has a lesson about what happens when the bad kinds of masculinity consume us. The ending hilariously shows the right way to go in all this, and features a scene where Eisenberg’s delivery will have me remembering it long after tonight. 

The Art of Self-Defense is a well crafted and tight dark comedy, and has a neat message for us. It helps that Eisenberg, Nivola, and Poots knew exactly what kind of film they were in, and all played greatly for it.