Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
6/2/08
It's fun every once in a
while to see a director go somewhere genre-wise that you would never expect
to find him. Yes, David Mamet is the gold standard for macho posturing
in modern screenwriting (the man wrote The Untouchables, for crying
out loud!), but a man who's still thought of at least as much as a playwrite
as a filmmaker has spent his career a world away from martial arts action
movies. Those two worlds collide in Redbelt, in which the
sport of Mixed Martial Arts is more than just a backdrop for a Mametesque
plot filled with con games and triple crosses. The writer/director
actually holds a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu and has something to say about
the conflict between martial arts intended for spiritual focus and self-defense
and the sports empires that market them as a type of gladiatorial combat.
Redbelt's all over the map as it tries to do a little more than
it's capable of in about a hundred minutes, but its' unconventional climax
packs an wallop of manly sentiment.
Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor)
is a Jiu-Jitsu instructor whose storefront studio trains all kinds of people
to use the art for self-defense. One of his students, police officer
Dylan Flynn (Randy Couture) is put in an awkward position when tightly
wound attorney Laura Black (Emily Mortimer) comes in looking for directions
and accidentally fires the gun she carries for protection at him.
It shatters the window of Mike's studio and Dylan does not file a report,
instead supporting Mike's lie that the wind blew something through it to
save the troubled woman from jail time. Mike takes Laura under his
wing and starts to give her classes. He spends a lot of his time
cleaning up messes, like the fact that Dylan's not being paid by the club
where he's employed as a bouncer. While there trying to straighten
that out, Mike has a chance meeting with movie star Chet Frank (Tim Allen),
who he helps to save from a bunch of thugs looking to pound on a celebrity.
Chet invites he and his wife Sondra (Alice Braga) to dinner and suddenly
they're their new best friends: Mike gets a job on the actor's new
movie and Sondra's clothing company is in business with his wife (Rebecca
Pidgeon). Chet's producer friend Jerry Weiss (Joe Montegna) is very
interested in a training technique of Mike's: having each of two
fighters about to meet draw a marble that dictates if one or both is to
fight with a handicap. Once he's turned over all the training materials
for use as part of the movie's plot, suddenly all contact with the Franks
is cut off and the marble/handicap idea is part of a new Mixed Martial
Arts pay-per-view being promoted by shady interests including Weiss and
Marty Brown (Ricky Jay). And when Mike tries to get his fair share,
he finds himself totally out of his depth among these cutthroat businessmen
who'll use anything, including the secret Mike, Laura and Dylan have been
keeping, to cut him out. What hope does Mike have, except to enter
a tournament on the undercard and fight his way back to both honor and
financial solvency?
Sound confusing? Trust
me, I left a lot out. Redbelt's about martial arts, but it's
also about a world awash in casual corruption and celebrity worship, in
particular the way everyone, even a stoic Jiu-Jitsu teacher with a heart
of gold, is waiting for that brush with fame that will sweep them along
in its' wake. The problem the movie has is that the plot machine
Mamet fires up is about three believable decisions short of running properly,
and some key plot points ring hollow. It would seem that Mike Terry
doesn't need the lure of Hollywood to get him to make really stupid mistakes.
And the big money conspiracy in which he finds himself is so complicated,
I'm not sure even the movie understands it.
But the movie's great saving
grace is Mamet's overpowering belief in the purity of athletic competition.
The climax, in which Mike learns just how far a champion (Enson Inoue)
has drifted from the ideals of his legendary father, The Professor (Dan
Inosanto), unfolds not as a battle to win a title or even a match, but
as an ever-so-contemporary struggle for a man who still believes in honor
to simply demonstrate it while everything in his world is working against
him. Yes, taken on their face, the climactic events are insanely
sentimental, but, softie that I am, I was quite moved by them. In
fact, in many ways, Redbelt is the opposite of what you expect from
Mamet: short on quotable dialog and long on squishiness. Granted,
it's a very manly brand of squishiness, but still...
Mamet likes to drop us into
the lives of his characters with little explanation and let us get the
lay of the land ourselves, and one reason he can pull that off is that
he's always got a top-shelf cast. Here, be it their fault or his,
the actors don't quite get the job done in terms of delivering the emotional
exposition. Ejiofor certainly has the backbone of Zen
decency necessary to pull off the climax, but he's not always helpful at
deciphering the motivation behind some of Mike's more desperate actions.
Mortimer does what she can with a skeleton of a role that's only on-screen
long enough to lay down its' barest essentials. Most of the roles
don't get enough screen time to be more than plot placeholders. An
exception is Allen, who's always had a certain weary sadness in his comic
roles and here gets a chance to run with it as a movie star who seems to
derive little or no pleasure from his life of privilege. Knowing
how good the former Tim Taylor has been at times in his career (Galaxy
Quest, The Santa Clause 2), I've always hoped someone would
give him a shot outside his family comedy comfort zone and here he acquits
himself wonderfully.
Those going to Redbelt
looking for lots of martial arts action will surly be disappointed.
Even the climactic fight is not all that well shot, and in keeping with
its' status as an outsider to the genre, the movie's heart isn't really
in the battles we see. But what Mike's fighting for at the end is
really resonant, and the final shot is so far out on an emotional ledge,
it'll likely either make you cry or laugh out loud. Redbelt
is clearly a labor of love for its' iconic writer/director, and if it doesn't
entirely come off, Mamet has put enough of that love onscreen to make the
movie worth seeing. He might want to wait a little while before taking
on a musical, though. |
