Review of Redbelt (2008) by James R — 21 Oct 2008

The Death of a Salesman. A Piece of Steak. American Beauty. The Crucible. Even Money. Assassins. Fight Club. What do these stories, plays and films all have in common? Each of them, in some way, features or portrays good people who lose everything, who try and try and try but just don't get a break. Some of these stories are about the harsh cruelty of society or the "real world," and their protagonists invariably end up unsuccessful, broke, and/or dead. Others, like Redbelt, are about the nobility and power of fighting on and taking a stand even when you have nothing left, and their protagonists, though they rarely make it back to the level at which they started, manage to beat the seemingly insurmountable odds stacked against them and reclaim/retain their honor and their lives. All are hard-hitting, compelling, nail-biting dramas in which the hits just keep on coming and the outcome is always uncertain.

The problem with films like these, Redbelt included, is that they are just DRAINING. Watching a good person be systematically deprived of everything he has hope or faith in and have his every good intention twisted back to hurt him is an emotional beating that is just really hard for audiences (or at least for me) to take. I can't even imagine how hard it was for Chiwetel Ejiofor to act that role. He did a fantastic job, don't get me wrong, but playing a man who sees his every trust betrayed had to have been incredibly difficult.

Along the same lines, this movie really had way too many bad guys. Pretty much everyone except Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer played some kind of villain--most of whom started out seeming to be a good guy. Even Ejiofor's wife (Alice Braga) sold him out. It made for a valiant final one-man-against-the-world stand, but it also made for a strong sense of imbalance. Added to that was illogic, as all of these bad guys really had no reason to do any of the things they did to Ejiofor's character, with the possible exception of the "let's just pick a guy and screw with him because we can" angle--which would have provided a sufficient if tacky explanation but was never explored.

I guess I didn't hate this movie. Ejiofor and Mortimer's performances were heart-wrenchingly strong, and Tim Allen's few scenes practically stole the movie. But on the whole, Redbelt was really too hard to watch for me to say I actually enjoyed it.