There are so many of them, such films, about how a loser, raking out everyone and everything, radically changes his life by touching the theme of combat, both in the form of some well-known style, and getting into a hard situation - there are good films, and there are not really, everyone determines this for themselves. Gave popularity to the direction in its time "Karate Kid" with Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita. The first film, as for me, was nothing like that, but it set inadequate cliches about being beaten to death in front of everyone in the school corridors, the absence of police, a Zen sensei, an alpha villain, promoting absolute ruthlessness towards the enemy, whose guys seem to be are cool, but for some reason they end up scooping up one by one at the tournament from the frightened main character with the face of a complete loser (tm), but even this is not the most important thing, the main thing, guys, is idiotic training in the form of “sweep the floor and learn karate” and crappy knowledge of materiel in general. All these stupid cliches were repeated over and over again in clones, and the further, the worse, right up to the audience killing themselves with a facepalm. Recently the topic was revived in the form of a series with aged karate kids. The series is praised, but I won’t watch it, I limited myself to a brief retelling and was not surprised that the cliches are still there, they just changed over time to suit the audience - all the same contrived conflicts, noisy showdowns that seem to be in adequate schools, and of course Ralph Macchio a couple of times in freeze frames he will demonstrate that same facial expression when he screws over a forgotten opponent in a fight; plus, in keeping with the modern trend of game of thrones, at the end of each season “ours” lose, and if not, then the villain, like Batman, is sent home in order to return and take revenge. And the police appear only when everything is over.
Later, another direction became popular - the hero is no longer a boy, but an adult sucker; he’s having a mid-life crisis, his wife is fucking his alpha guy and his best friend, he’s being put under so much pressure at work that we would have been sued under Labor Code long ago, but then he gets into an action whirlpool and somehow turns into a cool killer - and of course melted into alphacha. I like this direction much more, because, although it is often superhero, it is a little closer to life in the end to the film. This movie that I want to talk about is rather this option, or rather, a deconstruction of it. To put it simply, it's a stern poke at the karate sucker genre as a whole, but the banter isn't straightforward.
According to the plot, the main character Casey is just such a sucker - he is well over 30, he has a crisis at work, just like in the songs of the first album of the rap group "Bird EM": his colleagues consider him a fool, his boss considers him a sucker, constantly teasing him off-screen humiliating invitations to his home to show the fool to his family and boast about his nigga success (we don’t seem to do this, but Americans, I heard, do), lives with a dog, and is afraid of the dark, torturing himself with existential thoughts. And then one day he is beaten and robbed by some bandits and Casey, having first thought about the gun (from the scene in the gun store you will understand how easy it is to buy a gun from them), changes his mind and, as if by chance, ends up in the karate dojo of a slightly overweight, but harsh and a masculine sensei. Casey is inspired by him and begins to train. It’s just that there are strange things in the master’s behavior, some students disappear somewhere, and then trash begins. I don’t see the point in telling further, it’s better to watch it, the movie is good, although it slides into surrealism with a pinch of arthouse, but in the end it levels out into an excellent ending, correct in my opinion.
If you still can't watch it, read on. Why is the film worth watching, and what are its problems? As always, I'll sort it out in order.
- First of all, the film makes fun of “Fight Club” and especially its fans, but not the part that consists of art house fans and SPGS fans, but the part that in the 2000s consisted of gopotas, rednecks and “the right sense”, who think that the film is “about fights” "(yes, there were such people and there were many of them). It is well shown who the coach has gathered around him, the types are obvious - here is the badger, a kind of pseudo-friend, breaking the rules and waiting to be encouraged (encouraged, yeah, enough for a lifetime); here is a good-natured black man, who obviously came from other types of martial arts, with eyes like those of a beaten and washed sectarian; here is a gopo-maniac who loves to beat people up just like that and, of course, a girl, about whom a little later.
- Secondly, we went through would-be masters and gurus, but this time not through those morons who turn style into laughter with idiotic training in the form of painting a fence, polishing cars and lifting a jacket a hundred times and then explaining that these are all blocks in karate - and through the halls from a criminal and masculine, “conceptual” point of view. The training here is not shown in as much detail as possible, only superficially - yes, we have a harsh dojo here, there are semi-moronic rules, worship of a dead guru and the SACREDITY of belts and ranks, elevated to a cult by a cunning trainer (and at the same time constantly violated, which shows what they are like) are actually hypocrites). And then everyone waves their arms and legs, weeks go by - at the same time it is made clear that the characters are learning something, they can break the scoreboard of another, break the jaw - only upon careful viewing it becomes clear that this art works against the weak and defenseless, and the coach didn’t even bother to teach the main character to at least fall correctly - I understood this from the scene where he hit the main character and he fell on his head after training for many days. Just teach how to hit, reject weakness (believe me, hatred of weakness is the scourge of VERY many coaches, even official ones, but there is even zero talk about small-town ones), put pressure on masculinity and put pressure on stupidly - for example, the coach attacked the “femininity of the name Casey.” Well, off the top of my head - the name of Scott Adkins' character in "Ninja" - Casey, Steven Seagal "Under siege" - Casey; the best friend of the ninja turtles, a cool hockey player - Casey again.
- The actors perform excellently, you believe everyone, the Master himself turned out especially well, Alessandro Nivola perfectly played the typical “man of men” with a bastard character and unhealthy pragmatism. Jesse Eisenberg? His type, of course, is Loch’s, but it seems to me that thanks to his roles in blockbusters he has already grown out of it and here he rather plays “from memory”, it is clear that his character seems to want to carry out a cunning combination in the style of Lex Luthor. Of the rest I remember Imogen Poots.
- The main thing in the film that should be examined in detail is the surreal nature of what is happening. At first everything is understandable and imaginable - that’s right, the hero is a speech therapist after a situation ends up with a strange trainer, metamorphoses begin, this and that, and suddenly - surprise: the hero punches his boss in the face and insults him, mocks his colleagues, then more - but this is too much. .. It’s pretentious for a seemingly realistic film, we don’t have a comic book “Wanted” (yes, it’s based on the comics all of a sudden, if that’s the case), it’s not tortured "Karate Kid" - but as in the same karatekid, there is practically no police here, and if there is, it works poorly. However, here too my complaint almost came to naught - even in such a semi-fairy-tale setting, the hero acts according to logic and pragmatics, uses his head and almost immediately, at the first sign of misunderstandings, grasps everything the first time. In addition, the matter may well take place in a remote area, in a residential area, where everything works through the ass, regardless of the country of residence.
But still the stick gets bent more than once. The heroes repeatedly leave their “fingers” on various objects, many people disappear, and is it really possible that no one will be interested? For breaking into a house with murder, you can simply call the police... Oh yes, we are making fun of the “karate kid”, the police are working according to the scriptwriter’s magic wand. The scene with the boss at work is also out of balance and even too much, which spoils the logic, and if the man killed on the street really turned out to be a policeman, then the whole city would already be cordoned off. This is the only thing that greatly spoils the picture, so it is worth warning about this in advance before watching the film.
Oh yes, action. Of course there is one here, but don’t expect a lot of mega-fights - the tricks are mostly on Steve Terada, playing an angry Asian guy, has a brief fight with Imogen (stunt doubles were probably fussing) and a couple of show-offs. The rest is the beating of someone by someone, into meat and not so much. The meat is tough, not trashy, but you can fully believe in the beatings and their juiciness.
The result? Everything in the ending is simple and clear: the main thing in a person is his brains. And if he is smart, if his head is good, and if at the same time he has a simple human conscience, he will come out of any situation with dignity, even if he is a sucker and even if he doesn’t really learn karate. The head is our everything, and we must take care of it, which can be seen in contrast against the background of the other students who have succumbed to the influence of the Master and are trying to overcome according to his rules. The second message is also simple and clear - the person who screams the most that he is a cool superman, and that weak people are suckers, that there are a lot of bad people around, in the end he himself will turn out to be a complete bad guy in the worst sense of the word and, as in the film "Bruno" , there will definitely be someone who will remind him of this and bring him to clean water. And how good it is that such cases happen, for example, one such “famous” master got away from another, real one, when meeting him, in a couple of blows, and another, having called a blogger, got scared at the sight of him and ran away, insulting his students behind his back . And the film is good. Uneven, but good, even if karate and fighting are not the most important thing in it.
PS. The coach was very complimentary of the Russians in a couple of scenes. It's a small thing, but nice.
You can watch it once
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