It’s a little annoying to me how casting Jesse Eisenberg in this is playing exactly to his type as a nervous, socially awkward nerd. But then again, it works so why not? Riley Stearns is a very new director even if this isn’t his debut and there’s no doubt that he has made here a very interesting and thought-provoking work. While ostensibly a martial arts film, this is in reality a critique of the toxic masculinity that we often see in that culture. At the same time, it’s so stylized that I’m not sure that the critique hits all that close to home.

The deferential and physically weak Casey Davies is an office worker who evinces qualities that are traditionally thought of as being feminine. He is forced to venture out of his apartment one night to buy food for his dog and is attacked and badly injured by a group of helmeted bikers for seemingly no reason. After he recovers, he considers self-defense options for himself. He tries and fails to buy a handgun due to the cooldown period legal requirement and walks into a karate dojo. The owner who introduces himself as just Sensei impresses him so much that he signs up for classes and befriends Anna, the only woman in the school. Though inept at first, Casey is so dedicated and practises so much that he impresses Sensei who promotes him to yellow belt. Sensei also persuades Casey to reveal the real reason he signed up for the classes and teaches him how to be more masculine. He also invites Casey to the night class where the students are allowed to be much more aggressive and violent.

As I noted, this film is heavily stylized, such that it operates by its own internal logic that bears only a passing resemblance to the real world. It is patently absurd how Sensei gets away with the most blatant crimes and how everyone is so subservient to him. It’s also deliberately set in the pre-Internet era because someone like Casey would otherwise have just gotten on YouTube to search for self-defense tutorials and that wouldn’t work for this film at all. At the same time, the film is so consistent in its messaging that pretty much the entire plot is predictable, including its twists. But this doesn’t make it boring at all. On the contrary, Casey’s descent into the underbelly of the martial arts community is so inexorable and makes so much sense that you’re on the edge of your seat as you watch it play out. This is billed as dark humor because it’s so ridiculous and over the top in how the characters behave and how extreme this karate dojo but it’s really no laughing matter at all as it’s so brutal and dark.

The whole thing is of course meant as a far from subtle jibe at toxic masculinity as Sensei teaches Casey to be more manly by learning German instead of French and listening to heavy metal instead of adult contemporary music. It’s all fantastically amusing and entertaining but I’m not sure that there’s much of a deeper point here as all it does is confirming and exaggerating every stereotype of those who see martial arts only as a way of enhancing their masculinity. The character of Anna is blatantly used to show that no matter how good she is at actually fighting, she will never be considered as good as a man. There is an obvious missed opportunity in exploring why Anna is so insistent on staying on as part of the dojo while she keeps trying to warn off Casey and how her brand of compassionate martial arts is a healthier alternative. There’s even some mixed messaging in here as terrible as Sensei’s tutelage is, Casey does become a better version of himself that he prefers with few downsides.

All in all, this is fun enough in its dark way and sure to rile up the toxic segment of the martial arts community. But it doesn’t have much depth at all and it doesn’t really hit hard on an emotional level due to the comic book-like world that it inhabits.