Redbelt

[Drave]

IMDB entry Redbelt (2008)

Searched to see if there was a post started yet on this one... nada.

Directed by David Mamet (Wag the dog, Ronin, Hannibal, Spartan, Glengarry Glen Ross)

Apple - Trailers - Redbelt - Trailer 1 - High

This second trailer looks ahellova lot better than the first.
Apple - Trailers - Redbelt - Trailer 2 - High

Props for casting Randy Couture & Dan Inosanto

[Dom Devore]

I'm looking forward to this. I really enjoyed Chiwetel Ejiofor's performance in Serenity. I wish Tim Allen wasn't cast for the movie though, I can't stand him anymore.

[Rathgar]

I've liked everything I've seen by Mamet, so I'm looking forward to it as well.

I can't remember the last time I saw Tim Allen in a serious role.

[Lenas]

Looks great. I'm seeing it.

[Blumpster]

I like Ejiofor. His name is fucking weird though. He should just be Dave or something.

[Spontaneous Cumbustion]

Looks like a good movie, hope it ends up actually being one.

[voodoochile78]

I liked that it was a martial arts movie that wasn't about Kung Fu, Karate, or misguided western notions of Ninjitsu. When I was in my early 20s I did a lot of judo/jujitsu/wrestling/sambo/etc. so I think it's awesome to see movies about that kind of martial art.

I generally like Mamet movies about con jobs, but the plot of this one was ridiculous.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

For starters, imagine that you are a lower-middle class small business owner on the brink of bankruptcy that no one knows about. Now imagine Brad Pitt conspires with a bunch of really rich people and your whore wife and then comes to your house to con you out of an idea as trivial as drawing straws.

Is that not fucking retarded? Why would Brad Pitt get involved in an elaborate con job of you, a struggling small business owner on the brink of bankruptcy. He doesn't even know who the fuck you are. And your drawing straws idea is fucking stupid anyways, not at all worth his time.

And why did they have to con the guy out of his stupid marble idea anyways, when his wife and his wife's family were all in on the con? Couldn't they have told Brad Pitt about the stupid marble idea and saved everyone a bunch of time and money?

Oh, and why would a cop kill himself over a fucking trivial suspension at work? What an emo cunt.

In a movie about a con job, the person being conned has to have something of value. For example, some hot shit technology like in The Spanish Prisoner. In this movie, what was being conned had no value, and was fucking stupidly trivial.

I've been thinking about how this movie could have been made into coherent con job movie, with some very minor modifications. Here's what I came up with

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

The "good" girl (not his wife) needed to be in on the con. A crucial part of the con was how she grabbed the cop's gun and shot out the window. The way they did it, it was just a random event, and there was apparently this big cabal of conspirators (including a Hollywood actor) just waiting around for some random event to happen so they could pounce on this random bankrupt black dude.

Tim Allen should not have been made a big time Hollywood movie star. I'm sorry, but Brad Pitt does not get involved in elaborate cons to rob random bankrupt black men out of stupid ideas. He should have been a regular rich dude, or a fake rich dude like Steve Martin in The Spanish Prisoner

The cop should have been murdered instead of a suicide. People don't kill themselves over trivial work suspensions (when the charges are laughably false) because it might bring dishonor on their martial arts gym. Unless said person is an emo cunt.

The item of value in the con shouldn't have been the marbles. It should have been HIM. They should have made him a very famous martial artist who refuses to fight in competitions, not just an obscure guy with a gym who refuses to fight in competitions. Basically, he should have been Rickson Gracie (I think, my memory is fuzzy), who was famous as shit, but pussed out of competitions for years.

He should have been the object of the con. The fight at the end between him and John Machado should have been the primary goal of the con. Win or lose, at the end of that fight, his whore wife should have come up to him with some awesome line about how they made him sell out his principles for money, and it was planned all along. A line as awesome as the one at the end of The Spanish Prisoner: "No one looks at Japanese tourists"

There, I just turned this laughable plot into a coherent con job movie, with minimal modifications.

[voodoochile78]

The very small number of posts on this thread reminded me of the fact that my girlfriend and I were the only ones in the theater for this movie.

[Faille]

For some reason I initially thought this was a comedy, possibly due to to Tim Allen being in it, but it's really not. It's a drama about martial arts, and while there are fight scenes in it, there aren't many so it's not really a martial arts movie.

That said, I thoroughly recommend it. Fantastic acting from just about all the cast, and a good story and pace that draws you in. Possibly a little slow at the start before hooking me, but that might be because I was wondering where the jokes where 8)

My own issues are :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

The ending didn't quite hit the mark for me. It's good, but felt a little off.

Linked to that, is there wasn't really enough establishing of the brother in law, so the final fight with him kind of comes out of left field and feels rather flat

[Dom Devore]

For some reason, you fail at searching.

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/milli...hlight=redbelt

But aye, twas an enjoyable movie.