Multi-hyphenate super-writer David Mamet is back with his new film, “Redbelt,” and it’s set to kick you in the ass and also in the balls of your brain. [ed. nice work, classy]
Set in the Los Angeles fight world – inhabited by a world of scumbags like bouncers, extreme cage-fighters and other fistacuff lowlifes – the film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (pronounced Chew-wetel like you’re African) as a moralistic, samarai-coded-like Jiu-Jitsu master/ defense instructor, who through a series of fateful events is introduced to sleazeball promoters (Rick Jay and Joe Mantegna) and is eventually forced to dumb down his principles to step into the circus of professional fighting in order to pay off debts and regain his honor.
Sort of like the Karate Kid with a plethora of $10 dollar words.
The press notes come with this terse statement from Mamet which basically intimates he can school you in every aspect of life: “I spent five years and change training with a great Jiu-Jitsu master, Renato Magno, and associating with his colleagues and cousins, the Machados and the Gracies.”
Real Translation: Not only can I write circles around your illiterate ass, if you piss me off I’m probably going to break your pencil-neck in two.
Mamet actually associated with them too. This means he broke bread with the great masters, wow.
One of the lazier, peripheral members of the Playlist has seen “Redbelt” and tells us that it is “amazing.” Write a review for us already. Said lackadaisical member also adds that they’re not really feeling the trailer and the film is so much more. “Whattajoke! It’s sooo not about a ‘white marble,’ thats just one tiny subplot. That’s kinda the thing thats so amazing about it; there’s so much packed into it. [It’s] twist after twist after twist – everyone’s connected. Blam!”
Kinda like kung-fu, i mean, Jiu-Jitsu. But seriously this thing does look fantastic.
Our inside source also tells us Emily Mortimer has a much larger role in the film then the trailer suggests and that some of the film’s bossanova-like ballads were composed by Mamet and his wife Rebecca Pidgeon. Cockadoodledoo!
Watch: “Red-Belt” trailer
