Gentle fighter

Mamet offers up a manly hero dedicated to principle | Sam Thielman

It's hard to fight unfairness with your fists, but Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds a way in David Mamet's terse, engaging Redbelt, the latest exercise in testosterone-soaked genre filmmaking from the ever-manly screenwriter-director. The twisty plot of Redbelt is Mamet's version of a boxing movie: a crisp fable about overcoming corruption and greed through purity of heart and unswerving devotion to principles higher than yourself.

The R-rated result is surprisingly wholesome, if you can ignore all the swearing: Our hero is a gentle jiu-jitsu instructor living in Los Angeles with his wife (Alice Braga), where he trains police officers and rape victims to parry and avoid their attackers. Since his discharge from the military (which we assume was honorable; everything else about him is), Terry's own life is a study in nonviolence. "Everything has a force," he reasons. "Embrace it or deflect it; why oppose it?" Eventually, though, Terry is drawn into conflict with the sleazy forces controlling the Ultimate Fighting circuit. It's an industry too disgusting to embrace and too large to deflect, so Terry must oppose it.

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May 31, 2008, Vol. 23, No. 11

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