DVD Review - Redbelt

Today's review is of a recent movie, Redbelt. Written and directed by real-life martial arts enthusiast David Mamet, Redbelt is the story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and instructor Mike Terry, played expertly by the impossible to pronounce Chiwetel Ejiofor. Terry is one of the few men left in the fight field to actually value true honor. "Competition is weakening," he says, because "any one fight can be fixed." When asked if he trains people to fight, he responds "...I train people to prevail." Competition, in Terry's mind, weakens the fighter, because "a competition is not a fight."

Unfortunately, honor doesn't always equal cash flow. His school is failing, as his wife points out to him: "...what about the fighter's family, Mike? What do they eat, while he's being so pure?"

An opportunity soon presents itself in the form of Chet Franklin (Tim Allen), and aging action star Mike saves in a bar fight. To repay the favor, Franklin invites Terry to be a producer and advisor on his latest war movie. Unfortunately for Mike, things don't go exactly according to plan, and he ends up finding himself in the position he swore he'd never sink to, fighting for money.

Honor is the main theme that runs throughout the film. Both the positive and negative effects of having true honor are explored, especially in the tragic side plot of Joe Collins (king of bad-ass Max Martini), a police officer Mike is training. Terry instills "the code of the warrior" into every fighter he trains. The result is Mike acts as a sort of Samurai. He's a lone warrior sticking to a code of conduct while everyone else works for the highest bidder. It's definitely a lonely world he lives in, with even his brothers-in-law willing to fix fights and disgrace their father, who holds the only titular red belt, a level of honor reserved for the founding father of the art.

Being a Mamet movie, the plot is full of unexpected twists and turns, and the dialogue is superb. Regrettably, it is also difficult to hear. Not helping the matter is the fact that for some reason, the DVD doesn't include subtitles. This isn't the kind of movie you can put on and then do some laundry, or clean the kitchen. If all you pay attention to is the expertly shot and edited fight scenes, as good as they are, you've missed the best parts of the movie. I would recommend putting it on only when you have the time to sit in front of the TV with no distractions for 100 minutes.

Another downfall is that the film drags a little in the middle. Don't get me wrong, the dialogue is still excellent and there isn't a single weak performance in the movie (even Allen shines in his smallish role), but sometimes there's a little too much of people standing around talking when less words could have gotten the same point across.

It's all worth it once you get to the payoff final fight scene, though. It's extremely fascinating to watch two jiu-jitsu masters going at it full bore, no holds barred. Though not considered the most exciting of the martial arts, jiu-jitsu is definitely one of the more interesting.

Watch for a cameo by former UFC champion and soon to be action star Randy Couture as (surprisingly enough) a former fighter turned commentator.
Grade: 8
(All movies are graded on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being cinematic perfection, and 1 being the majority of movies that feature a crime-fighting or mischievous monkey.)