David Mamet explores the wages of honor in ‘Redbelt,’ a martial-arts homage to noir boxing films

Not so many years ago, "Redbelt" would have been a boxing movie.

Certainly, boxing buffs will recognize this story - bruised fighters hewing to some kind of warrior code in a sleazy business where the dirtiest fighting is done by men in suits - the only guys who always get paid.

But boxing, as someone says in "Redbelt," is as "dead as Woodrow Wilson."

Mixed Martial Arts has captured the fancy of a new generation, kids who know Kimbo Slice from YouTube but couldn't name the WBC heavyweight champ to save their Wii.

MMA is where the money is, and that, says "Redbelt" writer/director David Mamet, means MMA will be subject to the same moral metrics as boxing, to wit: Any time two men fight for money, the fix is in.

At least that's how it goes in "Redbelt," a neo-noir, MMA movie featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mike Terry, a jujitsu instructor so absorbed in its concepts of honor that he won't sully the purity of his discipline by fighting in competitions (fight only to prevail, he says, never to merely compete).

But it's not a formula for profit. Terry operates a rundown gym with just a few customers - a cop (Mike Martini) who moonlights as a bouncer, a rape victim (Emily Mortimer) seeking to replace fear with readiness.

His money problems prompt nagging by his wife (Alice Braga), who's Brazilian, and that's an important cultural subtext here - the movie touches on the rivalry between Pacific Rim and South American martial-arts styles.

Things change when Terry saves the butt of a movie star (Tim Allen) in a bar fight - suddenly, Terry is a guest on movie sets, and his wife is importing Brazilian fabric for Hollywood dilettante wives.

Those who know Mamet know that this apparent good fortune is cruelly temporary - dark, conspiratorial forces are already working against poor Mike Terry.

He quickly becomes a tragic figure, the one guy in L.A. (maybe the world) who still has an honor code and who sticks to it defiantly. The more Terry strives to do right, the more things turn out wrong. Desperate and alone, he's bullied into doing the one thing he abhors - fight for money.

"Redbelt" is a tough movie to summarize because there's a ton of plot; Mamet is known for his story intricacy. Kids going to this for some kind of MMA butt-kickin' marathon will be baffled, probably bored, and turned off by the movie's bleakness, steeped as it is in middle-aged pessimism.

I, however, am doing backstrokes in a lap pool filled with middle-aged pessimism. I think "Redbelt" is a reasonably worthy MMA successor to classic downbeat boxing movies like "The Set-up," and tells the same kind of truth - you do what you're told, or you're met in the alley by thugs who smash your hand with a brick.

I also admit that I love Mamet's odd locutions; yeah, it's stilted, but his stilted poetry is better than the dreary, vapid prose that passes for movie dialogue these days.

Only Mamet writes this stuff, and I think only Mamet could find a way to fit Ejiofor in a movie with Tim Allen. *

Produced by Chrisann Verges, written and directed by David Mamet, music by Stephen Endelman, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.