David Mamet is a mature, complex director who sought himself by embodying his different facets in films of various types. “Redbelt” looks like a compendium of Mamet’s styles and perceptions, mingling a somehow linear plotline with deep views on what the world nowadays means for a person with deep unswerving values.

The plot has a martial arts background, without sketching out a conventional fight film. Not contradicting the director’s creed that a film has consistency when it emphasizes ideas and not characters, “Redbelt” is not about Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), but about the choices that one makes when obliged to attain balance between his idealistic beliefs and the rough materialistic reality.

Mike Terry is a jujitsu master who owns a dojo in Los Angeles. He has always stayed out of the prizefighting work, deeming that "competition is weakening."

Unlike many other martial arts practitioners, he strives to keep the quintessence of the real old Japanese philosophy alive and to convey these pure values to his students; a relatively classical frame for a fight movie. The movie starts with action.

One evening, after a prolonged jujitsu class, Mike and Joe (one of his students) find themselves in the dojo. At some point a woman (Emily Mortimer, starring Laura Black) comes in, explaining to Mike that she crashed into his parked car bending it, so she wants to pay the damage. A misunderstanding makes her take Joe’s gun and discharge it. This leads to new complications. The protagonist doesn’t have money to replace the window broken by the bullet, so his wife, Sondra (Sondra Terry), asks her brother Bruno (Rodrigo Santoro) for a loan. They arrive in Bruno’s bar, where Terry saves the movie star Chet Frank (played by Tim Allen) from a beating in a bar. This is a turning point in the plot, as Chet invites Mike and his wife to dinner, with the apparent purpose of making amends for helping him. On this occasion, Mike is offered the opportunity to co-produce his Desert Storm picture, contributing to fight choreography. Chet and his producer actually intend to steal Mike’s ideas.

From now on, Mike’s principles seem to lose their stability even in his own eyes. The situation seems to prompt him to wonder whether it is worthy to stick to his idealistic views, taking into consideration the troubles they bring. But Mike does not show resignation in front of the chow-chow standing in front of him.

"Everything has a force. Embrace it or deflect it. Why oppose it?" he says.

Chiwetel Ejiofor embodies an ideal, a “messianic” figure. He’s “too pure to compete, too pure to make money “, as his wife tells him. With this role, the British actor confirms what he has already proven with his former films: you don’t need to go to and fro in search for glory, as stillness has the force to bring it too.

But Ejiofor’s performance and the director’s way of shooting are not the only rattling elements about this film. The lifelike cinematography made by Robert Elswit (“There Will Be Blood”) is also lofty.

Mamet’s message gets through by means of fluidity of events and the subtlety-carrying dialogue. His work on this film also encompassed his passion for jujitsu.

Although the topic might seem stereotypical and overrated, Mamet gave it the flavor of a story strained with deep meanings. Fight scenes are not emphasized, as they only outline the world where all these take place, the world which determines the main character’s inner uproar. The red belt is a symbol of a competition’s peak point. Mamet filled this word with a simple person’s path through the labyrinthine world of compromises, cheating and materialism. The dialogues are not bedizened with big words, but compressed into several intense sentences, like “There’s always an escape” and “A man distracted is a man defeated.”