Mamet's latest massively muddled action.
Often in life, we exclaim, "I can't believe S/he did [insert idiotic, immoral or out-of-character action]! It doesn't make any sense." And yet, when the same is true in a film, incredulity goes a step further. With disdain, we declare, "S/he
wouldn't
have done that," dismissing the film as unrealistic. Why demand more reality from fiction than from reality?
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It's a question I asked after exiting the new David Mamet (
The Spanish Prisoner
) film,
Redbelt
-a film that is, quite frankly, preposterous. It stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (
American Gangster
) as Mike Terry, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor in Los Angeles whose code of honor precludes him from mixed martial arts competition. Through a series of events-including an accidental gun discharging, suicide, betrayal, blackmail and an intellectual-property rights infringement lawsuit-Mike is finally forced, as cliché would have it, to fight for honor and to help a cop's widow pay her mortage and utility bills.
All of these events could conceivably transpire. The reason it's ridiculous-and why it is fair to dismiss
Redbelt
as unrealistic-is twofold.
First: probability. What makes unlikely events unlikely is that they don't often happen. When they start to pile up-backstabbing after betrayal after twist-one begins to feel that fiction exists in a different statistical universe than the one in which the rest of us reside.
Second: motivation. As any good homicide detective knows, there's always a motive. Not so in Mamet's world. Or, more accurately, the
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motivations don't derive from his characters. Which is another way of saying Mamet doesn't develop characters at all, for characters, like friends, are marked by their collection of tendencies. Without these tendencies there are no characters.
Redbelt
's only real character is its central one, Mike, who moves, it seems, through a world inhabited by people who will do anything just to keep things interesting. These corkscrew curves are compelling-until they become numbing and, eventually, laughable. Mediocre fight scenes offer little assistance. And though Ejiofor, who possesses a strong, believable screen presence, does much to resuscitate the messy script, and the rest of the actors, including a turn by Tim Allen, do little to deflate it further,
Redbelt
remains a belt that has been poked with hole after hole- yet one that still fails to hold up its baggy premise.
Like a fighter who spars without control, Mamet bends his audience's willingness to believe past the breaking point. This movie fan won't roll with him again.
