Film review: Redbelt

REDBELT (15)

***

DIRECTED BY: DAVID MAMET
STARRING: CHIWETEL EJIOFOR, EMILY MORTIMER

Don't let that put you off, though: Redbelt may be opening on the same day as The Foot Fist Way, but this is a David Mamet martial arts movie, and the intellectual rigour with which he approaches the genre is a good deal more engaging than the slack efforts of Jody Hill.

Brilliant Brit actor Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Mike Terry, an LA jujitsu master who deplores the artificial, fixed nature of competition, which in Mamet's typically misanthropic view, becomes a metaphor for the world itself: one big corrupt competition where men like Mike are anomalous.

"There's no situation you could not escape from," is his mantra, and a series of deliberately blunt plot contrivances put this thoroughly to the test by conspiring to back Mike into a situation where honour-destroying moral compromise might be his only way out. For the first three-quarters of Redbelt, Mamet's contained, disciplined, brainy take on genre conventions is thrilling to behold, so its too bad he blows it with a Rocky-style finale. Ejiofor's mesmerising performance does see it through, but only just.