“Redbelt” somehow manages to hit its mark

“Redbelt” is a middle-of-the-pack David Mamet movie at best, but in the artistically impoverished ghetto of martial-arts flicks, it's practically “The Godfather.”

Combining noir suspense, Hollywood intrigue and his own, practiced brand of macho mysticism, Mamet – the “Glengarry Glen Ross” playwright and director of “House of Games” and “Heist” – delivers a flailing punch that manages, albeit inelegantly, to hit the mark.

In a role that puts his genteel rhythms and Hestonian physical charisma to excellent use, Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Dirty Pretty Things”) plays Mike Terry, a modest and principled Los Angeles martial-arts instructor who schools his students in the artful grapples of Brazilian jiu jitsu.

As the movie's conflicted noir protagonist, Mike is essentially the martial-arts flip side of the private eye who swears he'll never take another cheating-husband case. Or the reluctant diamond thief who agrees to do “one more job.” Or the weary drug kingpin who wants “out.” To wit: Mike could make a killing on the professional mixed martial-arts circuit, but has sworn never to lower himself. “A competition is not a fight,” he says sagely.

So, instead, he struggles to keep his studio out of the red and endures the hectoring of his ambitious Brazilian fashion designer wife (Alice Braga), who cruelly mocks his non-materialist values and talks like a success-seminar shill: “Let the wheel come around, Mike. Let the wheel come around.”

Mike would be content to live henpecked and hand-to-mouth if not for a fateful case of mistaken identity involving a traumatized, gun-wielding attorney (Emily Mortimer) and an off-duty cop (Max Martini) who also happens to be one of Mike's most devoted students. Now dangerously in debt, Mike thinks his financial problems are solved when he rescues a grateful Hollywood action star (played by a non-yukking Tim Allen) from bar hooligans, but that relationship sours, too, leaving Mike more desperate than ever.

How these various threads tie together isn't necessarily important, and that's good, because Mamet's tailoring sometimes strains credulity. The point is Mike has no choice but to fight in the gimmicky, high-dollar mixed martial-arts showdown that he, unwittingly, helped conceive.

It will be the ultimate test of his humility and devotion, and it will also be kind of hokey, due to the filmmaker's insistence on loading the finale with his usual stable of quality actors and quasi-actors (yes, I'm talking to you, Ricky Jay) and wrapping it all up just a neat as can be. Which just goes to show: You can take the competition out of the fight, but you can't take the cheesiness out of a cheesy fight flick.

“Redbelt”
Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Emily Mortimer, Tim Allen
Behind the scenes: Written and directed by David Mamet
Rated: R (strong profanity)
Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Grade: B-