Full Timeout: The Art of Self-Defense Full Review

This movie started out very Napoleon Dynamite and ended very John Wick. We see Casey Davies (Jesse Eisenberg) go from a man who is scared of his own shadow to a champion of the people. All it took was a brutal beating, being blackmailed, taken advantage of, and his beloved dog being killed for him to finally stand up for himself. Eisenberg’s performance both broke my heart and left me terrified of him, and he deserves at least a look from the Academy for a Best Actor nom. This movie can only be qualified as a dark comedy. I cracked up in the theater multiple times, a lot of the laughs generating from the sheer painfully awkwardness of Eisenberg’s performance. This is movie is more than likely going to fly under the radar of the mainstream audience and that is a shame because it is a gem.

Casey’s boss, who for all intents and purposes seemed like a genuinely nice guy, really got the shit end of the stick. He was nothing but nice and a good friend to Casey, even sticking his own neck out to ensure Casey kept his job while he took months off. And all he got for his trouble was a fist to the throat. JUSTICE FOR CASEY’S BOSS.

I saw the entire movie as allegory for the modern day patriarchal system. The dojo represents society as whole, Sensei reperesents toxic masculinity and the system that has been in place since the beginning of time favoring men, Anna represents the women who are crushed underfoot, and Casey represents the changing of the guard. The film at times is very unsubtle with what they are telling the audience, for example Sensei telling Casey that the massage from Anna will not be good because she has small female hands that cannot do the things that men’s hands can do. Sensei keeps his proverbial foot on the neck of Anna, the only female in the dojo, allowing other less deserving men to continuously pass over her simply because they are men. Anna is so entrenched in the culture that she refuses to give up and leave, subjecting herself to the daily torture at the hands of her peers, who see her as lesser. Casey shows up and immediately begins to question the status quo, which threatens everything the sadistic Sensei has built. To counteract this, Sensei brings Casey into his inner circle, in this case the night class, and begins to poison his way of life with toxic masculinity. He has him listen to different music, kills his dog in order to get him a “stronger” breed, tells him to stand up to his boss, and eventually confront one of the men who allegedly put him in the hospital (which he obviously was not). Sensei essentially makes Casey solely dependent on the dojo, karate, and himself to gain full control over him. Luckily Casey is a woke king and decides to rebel (after killing a cop, but the movie really brushes over that. In fact no one seems to face any sort of repercussions for crimes the commit, even murder). He challenges Sensei to a battle to death in hand-to-hand combat which he gladly obliges. In a callback to a movie Casey watched earlier, rather than fight fairly, he pulls out a gun and shoots Sensei in the head, ending his tyrannical reign. He then uses his newfound power to set things right within the dojo, setting a new status quo, and getting revenge on the man who killed his dog. He then cedes the leadership position to the person who deserved it all along, Anna. The movie does a great job of presenting the dojo as a good ole boys club, including naked massages and lots of “no-homo”-esque homoerotic vibes. It also touches on other issues satirically, namely gun laws and violence, but the main takeaway for me was the ongoing issue of the glass ceiling for women and minorities, no matter how qualified someone is or how fucked up the current system may be.

Score: 86/100