I Would Like to See It: The Art of Self-Defense (Patreon)

“He killed each of them using his signature move; a move only he knew and which he never taught anyone, not even me. He punched through their skulls with his index finger. He was the greatest man who ever lived.” As delivered by “Sensei” (Alessandro Nivola), this bizarre eulogy for the late martial arts instructor known only as “Grandmaster” neatly encapsulates The Art of Self-Defense’s flattened, hyperbolic tone. Characters state their emotions in blunt, uncomfortably naked sentences. Products bear brandless labels like “BEANS” and “DOG FOOD”. It’s an honest world, if an ugly one, and for the most part director Riley Stearns makes good use of this cultivated atmosphere of blackly absurdist frankness, deftly picking apart the tremulous and fragile architecture of white masculinity.

Where Stearns’ movie falls short is in its tackling of whiteness as it relates to other things. That the white karate instructor who insists his students refer to him solely as “Sensei” is intended as an arch comment on generations of white men appropriating foreign martial traditions is beyond doubt, but Grant (Hauke Bahr), the film’s sole Asian character of note, is a violent, stupid drudge with about a dozen lines. It’s a missed opportunity so glaring that it spoils much of the film’s final act, and even the most charitable interpretation — that this omission is intentional, Grant’s lack of character some sort of barb about internalized racism — is still a significant fumble. For a film to build itself atop an industry wholly yanked out of the body of Asian American communities across the country and then show nothing but disinterested contempt for those same people is an inexcusable failure.

Eisenberg is effective as the film’s leading nebbish, a spineless accountant suffering from agoraphobia in the wake of a traumatic mugging. His infantile, unpretentious sobbing after he fails to deploy his newfound martial prowess against a bully in a grocery store parking lot is a particular standout, a showcase for the untrained and piteous sensitivity around which white manhood is built. The Art of Self-Defense is competently, if unimaginatively shot, its action staged with cool reserve, its violence coldly sickening. It makes the rot at the film’s heart all the harder to see, a vein of lazy, thoughtless racism spoiling an otherwise clever film.