Jiu Jitsu (2020)

Jiu Jitsu arrives as a 2020 science fiction martial arts picture adapted from a comic book of the same name, directed by Dimitri Logothetis, concerning an ancient order of fighters who square off against alien invaders every six years. Nicolas Cage drifts through the proceedings as a crazed veteran named Wylie. The film grossed under one hundred thousand dollars against a twenty-five million dollar budget, which tells us the audience stayed home in impressive numbers.

The cast is genuinely international, drawing on Tony Jaa, JuJu Chan, Rick Yune, Alain Moussi and others, though this reflects the ordinary demographics of a global martial arts ensemble and not any deliberate representational project. JuJu Chan's Carmen can fight and once loved the hero, which places her squarely in the standard action tradition with no commentary attached. There are no LGBTQ characters here, no engagement with race as a subject, no environmental anxieties, no economic critique, no body positivity, no neurodivergent figures, and no historical material to reinterpret. Jake's amnesia is a mechanism for exposition, not a portrait of a mind.

What remains is a gonzo romp that lectures nobody about anything. The film has no interest in instructing its audience, and it has no interest in much else either. It is a curiosity, a footnote, a thing that happened in Cyprus. We classify it, we file it, and we move on. The final battle involves a grenade and a portal, and the credits roll with a shrug that feels earned.

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