As Jesse Eisenberg’s ride-share driver Ralphie stares at the rearview mirror at his passengers and looks out with disdain at the gray streets and the people around him, you half-expect him to start reciting Travis Bickle’s journal entries from “Taxi Driver,” e.g., “All the animals come out at night. … Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.”
The callbacks to “Taxi Driver” and, on a lesser level, “Fight Club” are many in South African writer-director John Trengrove’s well-shot but heavy-handed and depressingly obvious “Manodrome,” a blunt indictment of toxic masculinity that strikes mere glancing blows and packs a relatively soft punch.
From a title that sounds like the name of a risqué all-male dance troupe in Vegas to the child-like name of the main character to the constant harping on themes of father and son and abandonment issues, “Manodrome” is neither as shocking nor provocative as it surely aims to be. Even the notion of Jesse Eisenberg shedding his spindly physique and passive-aggressive geek persona in favor of playing a pit bull with a bite to back up his bark has been explored before (and with better material), in the 2017 film “The Art of Self Defense,” which played like a demented twist on “The Karate Kid.”
Sporting a rust-colored mop, a small dot black earring and an intense, “What are YOU looking at?” expression throughout, Eisenberg plays Ralphie, a name usually reserved for the kid from “A Christmas Story.” He’s a recently laid-off maintenance worker who is working as an Uber driver and struggling to provide for his pregnant girlfriend Sal (Odessa Young), a convenience store worker who is growing alarmed at Ralphie’s increasingly distant behavior. (“Where did you go?” she asks him after he simply gives up during a lovemaking session.) Haunted by his dreams, incapable of being present for Sal and fueled by a simmering rage because nothing has worked out for him, Ralphie retreats to a seedy, underground gym nearly every night, where he engages in intense weightlifting sessions and is constantly staring at a muscular and cut bodybuilder named Ahmet (Sallieu Sesay), who is amused by Ralphie and sees right through him, and we’ll leave it at that.
Sensing Ralphie’s frustrations, his gym rat pal and Oxy supplier Jason (Phil Ettinger) tells Ralphie about a group of men who “like to help out guys like us.” Enter Adrien Brody, doing quietly chilling work as a self-appointed Alpha Male who calls himself “Dad Dan,” and lives in wood-paneled mansion where he plays host to a group of like-minded men who have sworn off women and brag about how long they’ve been celibate. “I’m sorry for your burdens,” Dad Dan tells Ralphie. (The older men in the group are called “Dads,” while the younger ones are “Son.” Subtle.) “You have that look … like nobody ever showed up for you. No one gave a damn. A lot of us here know about pain and absent fathers. It helps knowing you’re not alone.”
Shot in upstate New York, “Manodrome” has a kind of claustrophobic intensity, with Ralphie seemingly trapped in the smallish apartment he shares with Sal (and soon, their baby) or hunched over in his car, hungrily wolfing down energy bars and seeing disturbing behavior from his fellow man, e.g., when a bell-clanging Santa Claus exposes himself — or did Ralphie imagine that? The only place he feels at home is Dad Dan’s, where the men gather together and recite a pledge that will have you struggling not to roll your eyes: “I will not bend for you. … I created fire and I will take it back. I invented steel and I will take it back. I discovered the sun and I will take it back. I will take what is mine, what has always been mine and will always be mine. Not yours.” Great. You sound like cosplaying, misogynistic, immature idiots.
“Manodrome” telegraphs its course nearly every step of the way, doing so in such an obvious fashion that we think maybe we’re wrong, maybe it’s going to wind up someplace else — but no. Eisenberg is never not an interesting actor, but his Ralphie isn’t a particularly layered character, nor does he seem too tragic. You want him to wake up and realize there’s a smart, strong, beautiful woman who is about to have a baby with him, and maybe he should stop taking shirtless selfies in the gym, stop running from his responsibilities, stop hanging around with a bunch of men who are acting like junior high schoolers, and take some responsibility for his own life. His reasons for going in a different direction are neither compelling nor unique. He’s just a societal dropout who can do three sets of curls, just watch.
