Half Point

Redbelt (2008) Poster
Originally uploaded by divxplanet

I love David Mamet dialog (doesn't everyone?). I also love martial arts. I had never dreamed that one day the two might come together in a single film but they did: in Redbelt (imdb). The universe is an unpredictable place. Unfortunately, Redbelt is not.

One problem may be less the film's than mine. When I walk into a Mamet film I expect grift, I expect scamming, I expect double-crosses. Normally, even given these expectations, Mamet can still produce surprises, twists, and turns that are both unexpected and effective. This is assuming, however, that he has a full running time to commit to it. In Redbelt, half the film is grift, the other half is martial arts. Each half, therefore must be abbreviated. In the case of the grift, it is rendered both obvious and mostly devoid of the turns that usually make such things so much fun to watch. That I know it is coming makes it even less likely to surprise me. In this case, it was impossible.

The other half of the film is the martial arts which, once you peel away the grift, is just standard kung-fu fare. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mike Terry is the noble hero: a Jiu Jitsu instructor who is struggling to make his honorable way in a world that seems to have forgotten honor. His wife would prefer financial stability to his morality. His chief student is a troubled policeman and the stern portrait of his old master stares down from its perch on the wall. When it's revealed that a couple of promoters are putting together an MMA tournament, is there really any doubt that some way, somehow, Terry will become involved?

Making the grift dovetail with the martial arts is a problem that Mamet cannot adequately solve. The lengths taken to perform the grift do not, in any way, justify the pay-off. By the same token, the very presence of the grift retards the character development and neuters any emotional strength the martial arts finale might have had.

The final insult is the tournament itself. In a classic martial arts film, we can count on seeing an orgy of melee duels leading up to the climactic fight. Mamet, for whatever reason, does not go with the formula. And not in a good way.

Despite these faults in the film's design, Mamet's strength is still his strength: the dialog glitters. The fight choreography is also excellent, I just wish there was more of it. Many of Mamet's usual suspects appear, including Joe Mantegna and Rebecca Pidgeon, but they are little used. Ejiofor plays the warrior-philosopher well but the character feels ill-suited to the back-alleys of double-crosses, scams, and counter-scams, in which Mamet does his best work.

In the end, while I had a fairly good time with the film, its fusion of grift and martial arts meant that while I got some of each, I didn't get enough of either to ultimately satisfy.