Redbelt

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Not bad. It has the usual Mamet complex plot full of duplicity. I was kind of interested to see what Tim Allen would do in the Mamet hands, but his contribution was negligible. Chiewetal Okeafor was good as always.

It's about a Jui Jitsu master in Los Angeles and how gets sucked into the fight game. It's about honor and tradition and a redbelt of course. It's almost like a western in it's way.

[Drunk Monk]

...and I'm not 100% sure why I didn't. I'm a great supporter of any martial arts film that breaks the iron-clad stereotypes of martial arts. This just reinforced them.

It felt over-written. The plot was painfully complex and excessive in its duplicity. I hate 'reluctant fighter' films. I've met so many fighters - real fighters - both champions in the ring and bangers in the street - and reluctance is not one of their personality traits. It's more of a weird defensiveness expressed by writers about fighters - writers who dream of being able to fight but lack that talent and determination for it - so they create this absurd device of a reluctant fighter that is somehow more noble than someone who just fights. I'm also tired of the old 'corrupt fight game' plot. Sure, there's corruption in any sport and probably more so in the fight game because of gambling, but come on. Show us something new here if your going to go there. There was such implausibility with some of the plot twists and some fundamental misinterpretations of the 'warrior code' that made the whole experience rather painful. Mamet claims to have studied BJJ but he's a nibbler when it comes to understanding any warrior code. There were some major contradictions there. Ejiofor's fortune cookie wisdom was trite and couldn't hold a candle to Master Po or Yoda.

The acting performances were good. All the actors turned in decent work for what they were given. It's Allen's best performance since Santa Claus. And I'm a huge fan of Ricky Jay. His book Cards as Weapons was brilliant and held a prize position in my martial library until it was borrowed and never returned.

The fight scenes were mediocre, but we weren't expecting much. There was a scene that sort of showed off some BJJ techniques, but the transitions were so forced and staged that it wasn't in the least way exciting. The finale move, a Jackie Chan-esque escape from an RNC was absurd. It was an obvious tip of the cap to the fortune cookie wisdom that had been pounded into us from the very first scene. But to goes Jackie for the end not only belittled the BJJ theme, anyone who knows the slightest thing about an RNC knows that it was a sure way to snap your own neck. If I've got my RNC locked in, there's no way that would work, even if you were Randy Couture. Couture could peel me off like a banana skin in so many other ways. They should have gone with something like that. The highlight of that fight was that the villain was flying the colors of our newsstand competitor.

Ultimately I was very disappointed in Redbelt. On reflection, I think it was because I was really hoping it would transcend of the genre. It's probably a decent film if you don't have that expectation.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

"RNC"? "Republican National Convention"? Explain, please? Better yet, demonstrate on CF; sounds like he needs to get his reset-button hit (with a tire-iron...)

[Drunk Monk]

sorry, that's bjj/mma slang. triangle, arm bar, mata leon and my fav - omoplata - these are terms you need to know if you follow mma. i'll show you when i see you next. which should be in a few hours...

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

CF, you're right - DM is pretty handy with a tire-iron. I didn't know that they used them in MMA/BJJ fights. My head hurts.

[Drunk Monk]

all i want to do is ! ! ! ! and $ and take your money

strangely, dm had an interview with a visiting master (transcribing the tape now...well, no...posting this now and taking a break from transcribing - dm hates transcribing) and there's a kung fu school right next door of a mutual friend master, so suddenly dm finds himself in the yeti-hood so he dropped by on the yeti-shop for a drive-by to scam some free whisky and wtf - wtFf?! - yeti is in his underwear, reeking of coffee and whisky, muttering to himself incoherently about finding some stray foil spring and rummaging around corners of the trashed yeti-shop, piled high with empty starbucks cups, 3-inch bones, rumpled porn and boxes marked Tokyo Oh My - all of the glynch's fine set work was a shambles (wasn't built to last anyway - only a balsawood fascade) covered with wedge-point sharpie writings, mostly expletives about the economy, some massive conspiracy and drawings of an alien-like cockroach, with the yeti babbling on and on, something about fission, and when the doorbell rings, dm stands in shock (mind you, dm is hard to shock) and yeti looks up for a moment, covered in his own waste and says 'ready for my r-n-c!'

dm turned tale and ran. it wasn't worth the whisky.

p.s. the free parking that more that 2 hours long is just up millbrae ave, like two blocks past broadway.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Really? Was that before the fire? I don't remember very much from before the fire, just...a loud...scuttling sound, like a...giant cockroach...

[cranefly]

Someone accidentally breaks dojo window; everyone agonizes endlessly over how to fix it. The end.

I've been practicing saying something positive about movies I don't like. This is going to be a tough one. All the major scenes misfired in my brain. The encounter that leads to the broken window seemed incredibly forced, the various people acting out of character to set it up (and it was followed by too many long talky scenes that stopped the story). Tim Allen in the bar just didn't seem to behave rationally. When the cop commits suicide, the wife is furious -- absolutely furious -- that she won't be getting his pension, even with her dear husband still in sight, splayed over the desk covered in blood. And she's angry at Soon-to-Be-Redbelt. Why not be pissed at her husband? He had to know what he was doing to her. Jesus! Her emotions were so wrongly skewed. Then when Soon-to-Be-Redbelt helps the jumpy lady overcome her fears due to a past rape -- well, that just freaked me out, and I really doubt that 9 out of 10 rape councilors recommend that type of confrontational treatment. Then the big tournament where fighters draw balls, and a black one means you will have an arm tied behind your back, or even both arms. It becomes a massacre, which is the whole point among those running the show. They determine who wins and loses. But who in the hell would want to sit through these fights where the drawing of the ball settles the winner, and they needn't even bother climbing into the dodecahedron. Those spectators should have been booing throughout.

I really really dislike paranoia movies. I hated Coma (was that back in the '70s?). I hated Rosemary's Baby. In both of those films the protagonist realizes something is amiss, but no one will believe them, and ultimately it turns out that everyone's in on it, and the protagonist is just really fucked. Redbelt strikes me as totally in that vein. Mr. Soon-to-Be-Redbelt is taken for a ride by everyone involved, even his wife, and it is just a despicable unpleasant vehicle to be in for nearly two hours.

More scenes come to mind that completely misfired for me. I suppose it’s a cliché to say that there were plot holes big enough for a truck to drive through, but it reached the point where trucks were driving through trucks, breaking their windows, and no one quite knew how to put Humpty together again.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

But the poster totally rocked.

[Greg]

Wow. Thank goodness for the forum. I have no memory of this. It wasn't coming up on the search for me because I spelled Redbelt as two words....