Redbelt

Review

It’s always fun to watch David Mamet Mametize another film genre: the heist picture (Heist), the red-meat war movie (Spartan), and now, in Redbelt, the go-for-it sports drama. So how’s the Mamet Rocky? Fast. Lively. In your face. Very watchable. And, like its predecessors, so bizarrely convoluted it barely holds together on a narrative level. But the underpinnings are consistent. As Mamet has evolved into a confident and resourceful film director, his worldview has hardly budged. What’s changed is that his movie heroes manage to protect themselves from life’s inevitable betrayals.

In Redbelt, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Mike Terry, a jujitsu instructor with an affinity for cops. (He teaches the Brazilian variation, which is heavy on wrestling holds.) The opening gives Mamet a chance to do his specialty number: the character that intones lessons for combat that end up being lessons for life (which is, of course, a series of power struggles). This time, though, the protagonist has an Eastern tilt: He thinks defensively. Everything is a force: Embrace it or not. Deflect it�why oppose it? Conquer your fear and you’ll conquer your opponent. Ejiofor is a great Mamet spokesman. He internalizes the lines�he internalizes everything�so you’re not aware of all the finicky punctuation. Like Forest Whitaker, in Jim Jarmusch’s ludicrous Ghost Dog, he can speak of the spirit and honor of the samurai without making you long for John Belushi.

Early on, we learn that Mike has never fought competitively and also that he’s short of money, a source of irritation for his sex-bomb bookkeeper wife (Alice Braga). It’s no surprise that he ends up preparing for battle, but the road to the ring is rich in sudden reversals. Should you ever wake up to find yourself in Mamet Land, here are a few survival tips: Movie stars and their agents will bestow instant money and power and withdraw them just as capriciously. Wives and girlfriends will always go for the mother lode. Joe Mantegna is not to be trusted. Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet’s wife) is especially not to be trusted.

For a change, Mamet gives us a guileless woman (Emily Mortimer), a lawyer even, although early in the film she’s strung out on drugs and hasn’t had the chance to formulate schemes. But Mortimer and Ejiofor make an irresistible Rocky and Adrian. The final fisticuffs are rousingly good, although everything around them (the crowd, the media, the jujitsu master nodding in approval in the green room) is preposterously bad. Never mind: Onward. I can’t wait to see Mamet try his hand at sci-fi, Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Rebecca Pidgeon distributing the pods. — David Edelstein

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• David Edelstein's Full Review (5/5/08)

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