'Redbelt,' Summoning the Samurai's Code

"Redbelt," David Mamet's new film, should be thought of as a samurai movie without the swords.

And what fun, you might ask, is a samurai film without the swords? The answer is plenty -- in the writer-director's swift evocation of a dangerous and treacherous world where a brilliant samurai is manipulated by cruel court connivers until he must find a way to fight for himself against them and for the purity of his discipline.

The setting, however, is not 17th-century Edo but 21st-century Los Angeles, and the samurai is named Mike. The fights, just as quick and savage as anything from Kurosawa, are in a realm of combat known as Brazilian jujitsu, a kind of extreme fighting technique where feet and fists are used with full force against guts and heads, though the more common method of conquest is a chokehold that takes consciousness from the opponent. As an action director, Mamet really makes you feel the labor of this kind of fighting and the greasy closeness of muscle-clenched body on body.

Many of the concerns, character traits and plot patterns, however, are more Japanese than American, beginning with Mike's nobility. Mike (played by the brilliant Chiwetel Ejiofor) runs a small southside martial arts academy (think dojo) that specializes in teaching cops, soldiers and other professionals the finer points of survival at close range in real-world situations. He will not compete in the increasingly profitable world of televised Brazilian jujitsu even though he's related by marriage to the sport's royal family and its reigning champion is his brother-in-law. He prefers his more aesthetic existence because competition, especially for TV money, seems somehow "egotistical" or "vain" and desecrates the sanctity of his art.

This is a common trope in Japanese samurai films, but I wonder if Americans, part of a go-for-the-bucks culture, will quite understand it. The most famous antecedent is the stoic swordsman Kyuzo in Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai," whose coefficient was James Coburn in "The Magnificent Seven." Both were warriors of almost Zen purity with no need to prove anything, no need to compete, only to further refine their skill.

But there's a subtext of the film as well. It's that the movie business itself is a force of corruption and it tarnishes whatever it touches. As Mamet has it, Mike is in a bar one night where a tough guy tries to take down a drunken movie star (played with believable world-weariness by Tim Allen). Mike jumps in, soon finds himself in a fight with multiple antagonists -- another samurai movie specialty -- and takes them all down fast in beautifully syncopated action (it's probably the best fight scene of the year, though of course "Space Chimps" hasn't arrived yet). Thus, Mike's drawn into the orbit of the movies, offered a job as a producer and fight consultant and encounters a whole new world of prosperity just in time, as a freak accident in his dojo had broken his bank account and he's discovering how little money there is in integrity.

It's not long before his new friends have gotten him in a peck of trouble, to the point of so dishonoring one of his students that the samurai must commit suicide to regain his honor, another Japanese trope that may seem unfathomable to Americans.

It's not long before all these factors have combined to put Mike in a position where it seems he must sell out. That's the samurai dilemma most fascinating to Mamet, the same dilemma that informs "The Seven Samurai": The men have fought well against unbelievable odds, but they are not loved by the peasants, there's no glory ahead, no payday, no reason to fight and die. No reason at all, except their honor, which is the biggest reason of all, and so they fight on. Like them, Mike has, from the outside, nothing to gain and everything to lose. But Mike doesn't care about the outside, only the inside. Thus, the movie's central narrative asks: How can he maneuver against seemingly insurmountable odds to maintain his integrity?

Sometimes "Redbelt" seems to shunt too hurriedly through plot permutations, and it leaves key situations undramatized, so relationships seem confusing, though in the end they come more or less clear. What is memorable about the film is its portrait of a man of honor in a sleazy world, possibly a metaphor for the struggle of the artist to stay honorable in a world of backbiting, betrayal and hunger for easy money. Did someone say Hollywood?

Redbelt (99 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for strong language.