LIBERTAS REVIEW: Redbelt
What writer/director David Mamet does better than anyone is to take you on a tour deep into the rancid heart of an American subculture. A Mamet world isn’t an exotic, faraway place; it‘s one you pass most everyday without noticing: The weathered storefront; the broken down sales office; the university; the boat shop; the movie set. Behind those nondescript locations, Mamet reveals the savage human drama of that subculture mainly through small, desperate men entirely too caught up in contests of wills that are completely meaningless.
But that’s why we watch. Because we can relate. Has there ever been a more pathetic creature than Al Pacino’s salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross? After all, this is a man who lets himself be defined by his position on a real estate sales grease board; a man who puffs up like a peacock when he’s on top. But we understand that, don’t we? We understand because we’ve let it happen in our own worlds, in our own subcultures. Whether we inhabit Hollywood or a roomful of cubicles we’ve let our position on some grease board hold entirely too much power over who we are. Redbelt is more of this from Mamet, but with one striking difference.
Redbelt explores what happens behind the dirty window of that storefront jiu jitsu academy you pass everyday on your way to work. And while it’s still a world populated with desperate men doing the unthinkable for a buck and defining themselves by that which means nothing, here Mamet finds someone new: a hero. Not an anti-hero; not a thief with an honor code (he‘s had those before) — but a real hero. One who stands for something bigger than himself and who Mamet will put through hell just to be sure he means it.
Mike Terry (Chiwetom Ejiofor) is a Los Angeles martial arts instructor both deep in debt and married to a woman grinding him over it. She’s ambitious, trying to get a fabric business off the ground out of their cramped apartment. He’s hiding, avoiding a real life he knows will eventually rob him of the purity of the honor he jealously protects within the small confines of his storefront business.
A desperate but honest attorney (Emily Mortimer) who sideswipe’s Terry’s car and a chance encounter with a movie star (Tim Allen) in need of a martial arts instructor, opens up opportunities for Terry and his wife neither ever expected. But if it all seems too fast and too easy, that’s only because it is.
Mamet’s plot-turns are audacious, to say the least, but he’s such a skilled mechanic at setting the pieces in place you don’t notice until you’re writing a review. The goal is that of most Mamet films: to strip men bare and see what they’re made of. Terry’s no exception but it eventually takes wilder and wilder coincidences to achieve that goal. While the story never loses our emotional engagement (no small thing), it does end up asking too much from our ability to suspend disbelief.
Ejiofor as our protagonist is simply outstanding. Up till now, his most memorable turn was in the under-appreciated Dirty Pretty Things (2002). With Redbelt, Mamet directs Ejiofor into a full-fledged movie star. He carries the movie without resorting to a single trick thanks to a believable performance and a natural ability to hold the screen. With a serenity borne of confidence and a fierce intelligence he seems reluctant to unleash, Ejiofor draws us in with characters we want to know more about. Mamet writes to these strengths dropping hints about Terry’s past without ever going into detail. Knowing Terry has a past is enough.
Like his direction of Steve Martin in The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Mamet works the same magic on another screen comedian — this time Tim Allen who may not have a large role, but does have a pivotal one. With little screen time, Allen immediately defines his character with a melancholy seediness to go along with the normal movie star trappings we’ve seen before. The genius of his character is that he has no arc — he doesn’t grow — he doesn’t change. A fascinating decision on Mamet’s part crucial to where he plans to take things.
Redbelt has two major problems — and they’re not small ones. The first is the climax which reminded me of Rocky V (1990) and rang just as false. The second are the fight scenes. For you mixed martial arts fans there are a number of encounters, but they’re not terribly well shot. Too much hand-held makes it difficult to hold onto the geography of what’s happening and too much editing makes it difficult to keep up.
Populated with a solid supporting cast, many of them Mamet regulars, Redbelt’s number one appeal are the performances and that well-rhythmed Mamet patter they speak so well. But there’s also a strong theme about a purity of honor you don’t see much anymore which is fascinating when you consider Mamet’s sixty-years-old. That’s when most of us have lost our idealism not found it. But there Mamet is, finally shining a light into the dark heart of his small world to tell us, for a change, what does matter.
