Redbelt

While Mamet will never be considered a visual artist, there’s an economy to his style that extends to the fight scenes.

David Mamet's take on the trendy new world of mixed martial arts is a gem not quite like anything I've seen before.

The film unravels a bit in the last few moments, amid unanswered story questions and a simplistic climax, but until that moment, Redbelt is Mamet's richest film of the decade.

One of the biggest pleasures Redbelt offers is its intricate, closely held mystery, the sensation of not knowing what'll happen next.

This scores high on the ass-kickery meter, and what could have been another generic fight film is elevated into a thinking-man's Rocky by writer-director David Mamet.

As pure a fight film as you'll get, but it's one in which butt-kicking action doesn't cheapen the ideals its hero espouses or the artistry of the filmmakers involved.

It occasionally swerves into cheesiness and its ending is several measures over the top, but Redbelt's also good, smart, manly entertainment.

Mamet regulars Ricky Jay and Joe Mantegna blend well with Mamet newbie Tim Allen, a treat as a spoiled-rotten aging Hollywood action star.

Mamet is more respectful than exciting as an action director, but his fascination with how things work, be it the mechanics of designing and promoting a big pay-per-view event or battling a world-class Jiu-jitsu master, makes it all quite mesmerizing.

Redbelt may be a character study in search of a movie, that character feels fresh and real.

So gifted is Mamet as a writer and director that he can fascinate us even when he's pulling rabbits out of an empty hat.

Redbelt is the 10th feature written and directed by David Mamet, and it's a pungent little number.

Worth seeing for a number of reasons in addition to the Mamet trademarks of terse, stylized dialogue and a vision of life as an enterprise.

David Mamet likes repetition. He likes repetition. His plays and his movies often feature men at cross-purposes, fighting to make themselves heard.

David Mamet enters the realm of sports drama and Rocky-underdog clichés and discovers it's a surprisingly good fit.

In Mamet's new film, Redbelt, which he also directed, much of the whiplash-inducing dialogue that defined his earlier landmarks is missing in action. And, in this film, that's not a bad thing.

This isn't Mamet at his finest, though, which leaves us with a script that is merely three times as smart as the average feature.

Mamet proves he is the one writer who can bridge the divide between sub-Rocky fight movies and the stuff that wins Pulitzers.

The moody cinematography, the Brazilian music and the yarn itself are all engaging. But this isn't the prolific Mamet's best script; its convoluted plot has flaws.

There are one or two very minor fixes which Mamet could have applied to Redbelt's climax, which would have made it play so much less eye-rollingly that, well, this viewer felt personally frustrated.

Even allowing for a few slips in pacing and judgment, Mamet is on his game, and that is a sight to see. No con.

Redbelt, a bravado blend of martial arts and drama from David Mamet, is like no movie I've seen.

In his engrossing new film, Redbelt, David Mamet uses jujitsu as a metaphor for life. If it doesn't fit quite as neatly as baseball, that's only because relatively few are familiar with this form of mixed martial arts, which developed from judo.

Redbelt is clean and compact, its cinematography and editing exhibiting a clipped vigorousness that thankfully isn't complemented by the writer-director's usual, rat-a-tat-tat staccato verbal sparring.

In David Mamet's hard world, good people are the flints upon which vile cynics strike their matches.

Redbelt is compelling and entertaining at the same time, all a person could ask for from playwright David Mamet’s cinematic foray into mixedmartial arts. But of course, being Mamet, this film is about so much more.

It's certainly not Mamet's signature rapid-fire dialogue, but it's an intriguing and engrossing departure.

Redbelt being a Mamet movie (he wrote and directed), the noir puzzle element is central to the story, replete with double-crosses and other betrayals.

Anyone walking into the theater expecting another Never Back Down is going to be violently disappointed. Their loss.

Redbelt is a tough movie to summarize because there's a ton of plot; Mamet is known for his story intricacy.

Redbelt winds up as a tale of street-smart optimism, a rather straightforward tale of good vs. bad beneath all the plot twists. Given the context, ain't that a kick in the head?

Redbelt, David Mamet's characteristically sinister take on the mixed-martial arts craze, is like a noir, grownup version of The Karate Kid.

Mamet writes himself into a corner he can't fight his way out of, winding up with a contrived conclusion and an even goofier ending.

If you can imagine The Karate Kid written and directed by David Mamet, the master of verbal kung fu, you have some idea of the strangeness of Redbelt.

Redbelt is a middle-of-the-pack David Mamet movie at best, but in the artistically impoverished ghetto of martial arts flicks, it's practically The Godfather.

Despite a percussive score from Stephen Endelman and the presence of a top-tier stunt coordinator, Redbelt's ultimate Ultimate Fight moment feels sorely lacking.

The only thing holding Redbelt back, really, is its stingy, poorly staged fight sequences -- and a pedestrian antagonist that we don't even meet until the final scene.

Mamet doesn't hold up his part of the bargain, with murky overplotting that keeps the audience out of the loop about his characters' elaborate and undivulged backstories.

Mamet tries to load the story with more drama than it can bear. He loves twists and misdirection and overstuffs the plot with too many con games.

David Mamet is known for his profane, verbally dexterous storytelling, but oddly, Redbelt downplays the words as much as possible.

Inspired by his interest in mixed martial arts, Mamet's ode to the samurai spirit quickly bogs down in coincidence-driven plotting that's only partially offset by a colorful cast of supporting characters.

Certainly less profane in its language than many a Mamet outing, Redbelt is also more conventional in its narrative sources and ambitions.

A film that only excels when it treads on familiar Mamet territory but ultimately suffers from the ridiculous amount of characters and a convoluted plot.

Viewers who dare to resist the barrage of plot contrivances and implausible characters will eventually regret their decision to put up a fight.

Written and directed by David Mamet, a filmmaker who understands philosophy at least as well as he understands fisticuffs, Redbelt qualifies as quite possibly the smartest movie ever made about martial arts.

Redbelt will fascinate those who share David Mamet's interest in mixed martial arts. But its hold may be weaker on those who don't.

The stylistic flourish that marks so much of Mamet's dialogue seems more a vain, comic idiosyncrasy here.

If you mistakenly walked into the last act of this movie, you might think it was a sequel to the underdog potboiler Never Back Down, directed by a hack with a background in basic cable.

David Mamet takes his singular style into the rarefied world of jiu-jitsu, but the combination of his hard-bitten dialogue and the very UN Rocky-like milieu of this particular martial arts arena don’t really produce satisfying results.

In Redbelt, acclaimed playwright/filmmaker David Mamet attempts a thinking-man’s martial arts movie. If that sounds like a contradiction, well, it is.

From seeing the movies of David Mamet, one gets the feeling that he is an intellectual who tries to prove he isn't an intellectual by concentrating on scenes of action and violence.

Mamet may love card games and con men and gladiatorial combat. But his own tricks here are strictly mail-order gags. And the only person bruised by the end of the competition is the audience.

Incompetently made and covered in corn, this is a martial arts movie that makes you yearn for The Karate Kid. Yes, that movie was corny, as well, but at least it was fun. Redbelt isn't fun, just laughable.

Redbelt fails on nearly every level, from its incoherent story line to its threadbare action sequences.