To say that Redbelt is the best David Mamet film since probably House of Games is to confess that I really didn't think that much of House of Games and that Redbelt is actually David Mamet's best film. He often experiments with narrative, see; he wants to make a movie without proper pronouns, or with language reduced to its connective tissue and the metered parroting of key phrases. It's like watching a film directed by Ionesco (or Gertrude Stein, or e.e. cummings), all form over function--except that Mamet's ideas about direct theatre aren't terribly interesting. He's so honoured in letters (and I like many of the films he's only written, such as The Untouchables, The Verdict, Glengarry Glen Ross, Ronin, and Hannibal) that he believes himself bulletproof in any format. Because of that, his movies are antithetical to cinema. Mamet aims for the novel, but he's only ever just a ship in the collective fleet weighted down with a giant, pretentious, brass anchor for a rudder. Take his Spartan, for example, a film that distinguishes itself from a mini-spate of First-daughter films by bending over backwards not to say the words "the president's daughter." A scene where William H. Macy's lawbringer commands, "You, the man, stop," to someone in flight is a monument to philosophy over execution (and bad scripting). His pictures--even inexplicably lauded fare like The Spanish Prisoner--play like satires of themselves. Pinioning, excoriating satires. I'm reminded of SCTV's classic takedown of Ingmar Bergman flicks, moreover how I'm incapable of watching Bergman anymore without thinking of it.

So when Redbelt reveals itself as a simple film about dignity and honour that only occasionally seems like a David Mamet flick--well, colour me pleasantly surprised, and more than a little astonished. Without an obvious ulterior motive, Mamet has constructed a hagiography for his martial arts passion, the lack of pretense and artifice indication enough for me that Mamet only saves that kind of bullshit for everything else. He creates a film about economy and honour with economy and honour. Chiwetel Ejiofor, our most principled-seeming actor now that Morgan Freeman can't be taken seriously, plays chopsocky-studio sensei Mike Terry, who, like Miyagi before him, opines that all a belt is good for is holding up your pants. Daniel-san is Officer Joe (Max Martini), who, one fateful night, declines to prosecute attorney Black (Emily Mortimer) for attempted murder so as to save his beloved dojo from a loss of face, setting in motion a series of events that culminate in Terry having to confront his Bushido code in a world gone Bush II. Almost flip in description, Redbelt is about the last honourable man, the last tuna in a shoal full of sharks. Terry is, accordingly, besieged by a wash of outstanding bills, facing foreclosure, and tempted at every turn to betray that in which he most believes for a quick payday. His missus (Alice Braga, gorgeous and fantastic) shows her frustrated devotion (she reminds me of Gretchen Mol's wife character from James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma--another film about making a living and still entering your house justified), wanting her husband to enter a mixed-martial arts contest to plug whatever dyke will enable them to survive.

They meet a movie star (Tim Allen), there's a Mamet-ian double-cross, and Terry and his moral code are brought to their proverbial knees. Redbelt is very possibly how Mamet sees himself in the movie business: misunderstood for his diehard devotion to his dead letters and practical aesthetics, left standing tall in the righteous light of his true faith. And seeing it that way makes it hard to like. Yet it's possible to watch Redbelt as a text more plaintive than that--as a thoroughly felt piece about what it's like to try to nurse idealism in a time that's hostile to idealists. Freed from Mamet's rhythmic verbal gymnastics and the other ugly accoutrements attendant to his pictures, Redbelt awakened in me this sense of outraged justice I thought had died. It was the sense as a child that betrayals and stings were too awful to contemplate; here I was feeling for Terry, hoping for him, and feeling elation with him that although nothing gets solved, at least the whole of him remains intact. I wonder if that's not the best you can wish for once you've aged to the point where everything appears to be made of compromise and lip-service. Redbelt is a grown-up underdog sports-uplift movie. It has too much Mamet in it still to brand it any kind of masterpiece, but, stripped-down and mean, it honours its character and his artistry. For all its genre glances and occasional awkwardness, it's hard not to respect it.-Walter Chaw

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Published: May 2, 2008