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Redbelt (2008)

Director: David Mamet

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From Time Out Chicago

After tortuous screeds on Hollywood doublespeak, the present state of self-hating Judaism and his own abdication of “brain-dead” liberalism, Mamet officially exceeds his quota of permissible bullshit for this decade with this preposterous new shell game, in which an L.A. jujitsu instructor (Ejiofor) rescues a movie star (Allen) from a bar brawl and gets roped into a half-pint House of Games as a reward. Did you know that sporting events can be fixed, that movie stars can be venal, that standing on principle is a sucker’s game and that sometimes the most honorable punches are thrown outside the ring?

Connoisseurs of spot-the-Mametism will be in heaven. “Booze, women. What in this life doesn’t get you into trouble?” quips Allen, cast as a megastar because his director’s perversity with actors matches that of his camera placement. Never one to show when he can tell, Mamet—a purple belt in Brazilian jujitsu—smacks his lips over a series of increasingly convenient dei ex machina. Typically, the women morph from loving companions to traitorous harpies off-screen—a failure of foreshadowing masquerading as sleight of hand. Concluding with a shot that surely had the crew cackling on set, Redbelt is an essential bout in its maker’s ongoing self-destruction.

Author: Ben Kenigsberg

Time Out Chicago Issue 167: May 8–14, 2008


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Cast & crew

Director: David Mamet

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen, Alice Braga, Emily Mortimer, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay, David Paymer, Rebecca Pidgeon full cast

Rated: R

Duration: 99 mins

US Release: May 2 2008




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