The Art of Self-Defse is a 2019 black comedy martial arts film writt and directed by Riley Stearns and starring Jesse Eisberg, Alessandro Nivola and Imog Poots. It had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 10, 2019, and was released in the United States on July 12, 2019, by Bleecker Street.
Timid and awkward accountant Casey is brutally attacked on the street by a motorcycle gang. He comes across a dōjō led by a charismatic man referred to as "Ssei" and, after taking a trial class, decides to learn karate for protection instead of purchasing a firearm. Despite his physical weakness, Casey's determination impresses Ssei and he is promoted to yellow belt at their next promotion ceremony, while Anna, the sole female studt and childr's class teacher of the dōjō is died promotion to black belt.
As Casey learns the dōjō's strange customs - its unbreakable set of rules and the praising of its powerful grandmaster, who developed a technique of punching through an oppont's skull with his index finger - he himself becomes more toxically masculine: looking at pornography at work, attacking his boss, and listing to loud, angry music.
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Further impressed, Ssei invites Casey to the exclusive night classes, where he breaks a studt's arm and expels him from the dōjō for showing up uninvited. Anna brutally defeats Thomas, the studt promoted to black belt over her, to prove her worth, but Ssei disqualifies her for her aggression despite him usually approving of it.
Ssei claims he has located one of the m who attacked Casey and they track him to a bar, where he pushes Casey to attack him as retribution. He later realizes the man was innoct and returns home to find his pet Dachshund dead, kicked to death by a technique he recognizes as Ssei's. He confronts him and threats to report him to the authorities, only to find that Ssei taped him attacking the man. He tries to attack Ssei, but is easily defeated.
At the next night session, Ssei takes Casey and several other studts to go out on motorcycles. They target a man who turns out to be an undercover cop trying to bust the group; Anna is shot in the leg, but Casey kills the cop on Ssei's orders. Ssei awards Casey a red stripe on his belt to signify his having killed a man. Anna, who also has a red stripe, confides in Casey that she got hers after killing a black belt who tried to sexually assault her. She urges him to leave the dōjō.
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Casey returns home to find an aggressive German Shepherd gifted to him by Ssei, which will attack him unless he can control it. Pushed to his limit, he breaks into the dōjō at night, finding videotapes that documt every attack Ssei ordered. He watches his own attack, in which Thomas is ordered to kill him but Anna stops him. He also finds that Ssei makes money by extorting former studts.
The next morning, Ssei arrives at the dōjō to find the exiled studt dead, hanging by his own belt, and he burns the body in a crematorium in the back office. Casey approaches him and challges Ssei to fight to the death, only to draw a handgun wh the fight starts and shoot him in the head.
As the studts arrive, Casey displays Ssei's body and claims he killed him with the grandmaster's technique, making him the new Ssei. He chooses to give his position to Anna instead and, after finding his Dachshund's bite mark on Thomas' arm, has him killed by his German Shepherd, which now obeys him. Anna proclaims that the dōjō will be ctered around more compassionate, defsive teachings, and Casey becomes the new teacher of the childr's classes.
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Leland Orser and Josh Fadem cameo as a detective and serial killer, respectively, in a film within a film watched by Casey. Caroline Amiguet voices a Frch language instructor.
In May 2016, it was announced Mary Elizabeth Winstead had joined the cast of the film, with her husband Riley Stearns directing from a screplay he wrote.
In September 2017, it was announced Jesse Eisberg, Imog Poots and Alessandro Nivola joined the cast of the film, with Poots replacing Winstead, and Andrew Kortschak, Cody Ryder, Stephanie Whonsetler and Walter Kortschak serving as producers on the film, while Bleecker Street distributed the film.
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On Rott Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 166 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical conssus reads, "The Art of Self-Defse grapples compellingly with modern American masculinity and serves as an outstanding calling card for writer-director Riley Stearns."
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "gerally favorable reviews."
Peter Debruge of Variety wrote, "This singular black comedy balances off-kilter humor with an unexpectedly thriller-esque undercurrt, to the extt that audices will find it tough to anticipate either the jokes or the dark, Fight Club-like turn things evtually take — all to strikingly original effect."
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Writing in Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gives the film 2.5 out of 3 stars, writing: "The Art of Self-Defse sets itself up as the 90-pound weakling destined to live forever in the shadow of Fight Club. The good news is that writer-director Riley Stearns gets in a few good licks at toxic masculinity before odious comparisons to David Fincher’s masterpiece blunt the film’s comic and dramatic impact.[13](pressure-point fighting) are often subjected to criticism. It all started when their self-defense moves were first brought into the limelight and onlookers didn't even want to believe the techniques were real. Those days are long past, however, and the reality of knockouts resulting from usage of human pressure points has been convincingly demonstrated time and time again — most notably by
Hall of Fame member (and kyusho-jitsu expert) George Dillman and his students. Nowadays, two main criticisms of kyusho-jitsu persist. The first consists of dire warnings that self-defense moves using pressure-point techniques are dangerous and that those who practice them by actually knocking each other out are reckless and foolhardy. This accusation was later found to be groundless.
For decades now, the once-secret art of kyusho-jitsu has been publicly taught and demonstrated. Thousands of students now practice the methods of kyusho-jitsu, and an untold number of people have been knocked out practicing its self-defense moves, some on numerous occasions.
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In 1997, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, a team of scientists sought to examine the mechanism behind human-pressure-point knockouts. In their findings — which were reported in
Nonetheless, claims regarding arts like kyusho-jitsu and the dangers of human-pressure-point techniques persist like urban legends. Yet no one seems to ask the most natural questions in the world about these self-defense moves: “Where are the bodies? Where are the legions of martial artists whose health has been ruined by these strikes?"
This response to the claims of associated dangers eliminates the need to address the issue by comparing pressure-point strikes to free sparring, yet it still should be done.
The Art Of Self Defense (2019)
In free sparring, martial artists regularly suffer damaged joints, concussions, broken bones and even occasional death — all while participating in “no-contact" sparring. When the action is intensified to the level of full-contact fighting or boxing, the potential for injury is even greater, yet few ever accuse practitioners of those sports of reckless disregard for others.
Let's be honest: Despite the cautionary advice of those who don't practice arts such as kyusho-jitsu and really don't know anything about it, there's no evidence to support the persistent cry that the practice of self-defense moves utilizing human pressure points is “reckless and dangerous."
The second criticism of kyusho-jitsu is that the human pressure points that must be activated are too discreet to be used in actual fighting. Those who make this claim always preface it by admitting that the points are for real and that they actually work in demonstrations. But in real combat, they insist, it simply isn't possible to hit such tiny human pressure points.
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Setting aside the fact that the whole point of training is to learn how to perform high-level tasks under stress, it must be acknowledged that it is difficult to accurately hit a small moving target. This point has been articulated in many ways, but one of the best versions is this: A brain surgeon can perform a delicate operation, but can he perform it while the patient is running around the room?
Such a pithy summation of the problem seems to end the discussion among those who have no knowledge base from which to respond. However, the educated response of a person who practices self-defense moves involving human pressure points is simply: “You're right. If you want to perform brain surgery, you first have to strap down the patient."
That statement leads to what might be called the thesis of kyusho-jitsu: If the opponent is unable to move, it's a whole lot easier to hit a point on his body. So the first rule of the art is to aim for the points that aren't moving because
The Art Of Self Defense (2019 Film)
