Red­belt is writer/director David Mamet’s ode to jiu-jitsu, of which he him­self is report­edly a pur­ple belt. Mike Terry (Chi­we­tel Ejio­for) is a strug­gling black belt jiu-jitsu instruc­tor, one of the few remain­ing prac­ti­tion­ers of mar­tial art in its authen­tic Japan­ese ori­gins. The pro­fes­sional com­bat sport asso­ci­a­tion MMA (Mixed Mar­tial Arts) has tainted the mar­tial art with com­mer­cial­ism and spec­ta­cle akin to pro­fes­sional wrestling. In con­trast, Terry is a noble war­rior with an absolute code of honor, like Robert Scott (Val Kilmer) in Mamet’s Spar­tan (2004). Terry is a for­mer spe­cial forces sol­dier, with a past in one or both Gulf Wars he does not wish to dis­cuss. One of his favorite apho­risms becomes some­thing that he real­izes he must live up to him­self: “There is no sit­u­a­tion from which you can­not escape.” He’s a fear­some fighter, able to win a bar fight with­out throw­ing a sin­gle punch. But another of his apho­risms, “com­pe­ti­tion is weak­en­ing,” reflects his choice to teach self-confidence and reliance, not aggres­sive combat.

“Com­pe­ti­tion is weakening”

Like many of Mamet’s films, Red­belt fea­tures many of his reg­u­lar sta­ble of actors: Rebecca Pigeon (Mamet’s wife, who also per­formed the music), Ricky Jay, David Paymer, Joe Man­tegna, and a cameo from Ed O’Neil. Any­one famil­iar with Mamet’s films would know to sus­pect a char­ac­ter played by any one of these actors is up to some mis­chief, espe­cially if the lat­ter two are seen to be in any kind of col­lu­sion. Sig­nif­i­cantly for a playwright/writer/director known for his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally dense dia­log, the last long sequence is mostly wordless.

Mamet states Red­belt is firmly in the fight film genre, sin­gling out the two recent exam­ples of Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby and Cin­derella Man. Like the superb Spar­tan, it’s also some­thing of a samu­rai movie. Just don’t call it a mar­tial arts or action flick. It also includes healthy doses of two other Mamet obses­sions: the long con and the cor­rup­tion inher­ent in busi­ness. The most obvi­ous advan­tage of the long con in sto­ry­telling terms is that it auto­mat­i­cally pro­vides a struc­ture for a fiendishly com­plex plot, as it did for both House of Games (1987) and The Span­ish Pris­oner (1997).

“There is no sit­u­a­tion from which you can­not escape”

Mamet’s recur­ring theme of insti­tu­tional cor­rup­tion in the busi­ness world is prob­a­bly best expressed in Glen­garry Glen Ross (read The Dork Report review). But in his book Bambi Vs. Godzilla (2007) and movie State & Main (2000), Mamet reveals the one par­tic­u­lar busi­ness that fas­ci­nates him the most: Hol­ly­wood. As he states in the elec­tronic press kit included in the Red­belt DVD, moviemak­ing is a busi­ness like any other, but the par­tic­u­lars of its moral bank­ruptcy fas­ci­nate him. Terry is seduced by Hol­ly­wood as embod­ied by aging action star Chet Frank (Tim Allen). Frank first finds lever­age in the fact that Terry is broke, but also rec­og­nizes that he is is secretly pride­ful, and seeks approval and recog­ni­tion for the bur­den of honor he has been car­ry­ing for so long. These flaws make him manip­u­lat­able. Frank ini­tially seems to pro­vide the solu­tions to his prob­lems, but turns out to be the pre­cise inverse of his name: all empty promises, façades, scams, and pretense.

The two cor­rupt worlds of Red­belt are both hun­gry for meat: pro­fes­sional sports need fight­ers to run through the grinder, and the movie busi­ness eats up ideas as raw mate­r­ial for its prod­uct. They find both in Mike, and nei­ther wants to pay for what they try to take from him.

Offi­cial movie site: www.sonyclassics.com/redbelt

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.