Anyone else watch this David Mamet movie? I've enjoyed several of his films. I'm thinking I should get ahold of the ones I've missed. I got Redbelt on Blu-ray, of course. It's an engaging movie, and it certainly doesn't follow formula. It's good enough that I think I'll have to watch it again this weekend.

"The Edge" is another surprising Mamet movie. Loved it.

Thanks for the tip.

Oh, I remember that movie. Vaguely. It's been a long time since I've seen it. I should revisit it, I suppose.

Redbelt was very engaging, I really enjoyed it. Imo one of the better movies released lately.

Saw it in theatres and was left very underwhelmed. He made this movie before, as Spartan, and it was a lot better. Too many non sensical plot elements and twists, and the whole centre of the story just seemed dumb. It started out good and had some great characters, but Mamet seemed to have no idea what to do with them or where to take them, and it just fizzled out.

I was pretty happy with where he took the characters. However, I do have Spartan on order.

I watched Spartan. It was a very good movie, but I'm not getting how Redbelt is a shabbier Spartan. I like them both.

I saw Spartan last week, I enjoyed it but I liked Redbelt better.

I haven't seen Spartan since I saw it in theatres, so my mind is a little fuzzy on details, but if anything, Mamet's usually convoluted plots just make sense in a movie about secret government spies/assasins.

My main beef with Redbelt has to do with plot points. Spoilers folow, so anyone not having seen the movie please skip this post.

-The whole plot jumble of a big conspiracy involving cops, a washed up Hollywood actor, MMA promoters et al just to steal something from a BJJ instructor seemed silly.
-The fact that all these already unlikely events occured to steal an IDEA from a BJJ instructor, to use in some budget PPV scheme seems both silly and trite to me.
-That the "idea" is a way to handicap fighters at "random" by picking coloured balls seems even more dumb to me, given that you could never handicap legal fights to begin with (if said fights were underground or something, sure, but the movie goes out of its way to make it seem like it's all legit TV PPV UFC style event).
-If they wanted to handicap fights, and ignoring the fact that they couldn't legally/realistically, why not just make up some BS thing? Draw straws? Random computer generated results? Nope. You have to steal some budget idea from a nobody BJJ instructor which involves a series of complex and highly unlikely occuring events just to get the idea...
-Oh yeah, you need a MAGICIAN to help you fix the marble draw

I liked the characters introduced in the movie, it started out really well. I'm a Mamet fan, and an MMA fan, so I had high hopes for this movie. But the series of what I consider to be increasingly dumb and unneccesary plot twists, ending with what seemed like a lame Rocky rip-off ending left me with a bad taste in my mouth, which ruined the movie for me. Maybe my hopes were too high? Maybe my liking of MMA as a real sport meant seeing it portrayed so poorly and stupidly just coloured my own view of the movie. Not sure.

Anyway, end rant. I'm coming off sounding way too negative here. haha.

CONTINUED SPOILAGE. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE.

It's all right. You have your point of view, and I can see where you're coming from. The way I see it, however, is not that it was a huge conspiracy to steal the man's idea, but it just turned into that through the evolving circumstances. I'm not sure about the legality of handicapping fights. Is it really against the law to have weighted competitions?

I thought the differentiation between competitive fighting and real fighting worked, and I don't see the ending as a rip-off. It was a real fight at the end, and it wasn't to win money, fame, or to prove anything, but to uphold an ideal.

As for magicians, they do exist. Of course it's not real magic. I suppose it's a stretch to think they have uses outside of bunny pulling? Maybe there's a better way it could have been done, but I didn't mind its integration.

And yeah, maybe the reason I could go along with the story is because I don't have a real love for MMA, or sports in general. Playing sports is fine, but let's be honest, professionally it's always going to be about the money. I have no problem with that, as I'm the biggest consumer of entertainment I know, but let's not take it too seriously. It's recreation designed to drain wallets. Again, I think the contrast between competition and real fighting/self-defense that the movie highlights is a sound one.