Review of Redbelt (2008) by M Jahi C — 31 Dec 2008
Under no account should you see this obtuse and contrived movie. Not only was it so Mamet that even the milk turns Mamet -- everyone, EVERYONE repeats 50% of their lines twice, a distracting tick on Mamet's part. It's like he took a weekend course in the Aaron Sorkin school of scriptwriting, and felt like the problem with his face-paced exchanges between characters with lots of repetition is that it was too fast paced and interesting, with not enough repetition.
Mamet also takes the Chekhov approach to playwriting -- if you see a gun on the mantelpiece in the 1st act, it must be fired int he 3rd act -- to a ridiculous extreme. Everything that happens earlier in the movie comes into contrived twists in the end, including a bizarre and no-resemblance-or-bearing-at-all-to-how-actual-people-act "honor" suicide.
It's too bad - I love Ejiofor, Emily Mortimer is "Mrrrow" in a mousy way, but jesus. Don't watch.
That said, relatively solid acting despite quite wooden direction from Mamet, and an interesting intellectual puzzle as it devolves into shoddy psuedo-samurai-and-honor-stuff nonsense.
This review of Redbelt (2008) was written by M Jahi C on 31 Dec 2008.
Redbelt has generally received positive reviews.
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