I have watched this movie when it first came out and by the end of it I was left with a sense of emptiness and confusion, like, what the hell just happened??OK, to be honest I am not a big fan of cheesy dramas with plots were the main character is basically a washed out loser like Mike Terry is portrayed. But, because I am a big fan of martial arts movies and since I practice BJJ, I decided to give it a shot.The movies starts with the typical drama plot but somehow keeps me interested because I am curious about the character development, that is until Mike starts preaching his "no colored belt philosophy", that a black belt is given to the people he thinks deserve it… wow, where do you come up with this? Lol…. And, after only a few classes, not years, classes, Mike gives a black belt to his new protégée!?!Honestly, any person that trains martial arts for a long time can't help but feel mad about the complete disrespectful message this movie sends regarding every black belt in the world that trained long hard years to achieve it. On average it takes 10 years of hard continuous training to get a Jiu Jitsu black belt. About 5 years for Karate. Not a couple of weeks like the movie implies… No wonder that more and more MacDojos are just giving them away like lollies just to get students…Anyways, the movie goes on, blah blah blah, more rubbish dramatic philosophies; "Oh, but why won't you fight??" Asks the wife. " Because it goes against my principles" Says the husband…SPOILER ALERT!! All this builds up for the great finale: The worst fight ever against one of the best BJJ masters, 6th degree black belt John Machado. Mike Terry easily wins the fight, wipes the dust off and is given a Red belt which in REAL LIFE is the highest achievement in Jiu Jitsu and Martial Arts in general. Roll the credits.What a joke!!!

A fantastic movie! The traditional script of a movie is nothing in comparison to this masterpiece. Whether its a fighting movie that you enjoy or a drama, this movie will take your breath away! I could not have been happier with this movie. A must watch for any true movie buff! The story is fantastic! Tim Allen plays a completely different role from his standard and Chiwetel Ejiofor gives a performance of a lifetime. Even the appearance of Randy Couture make the movie that much more believable. The fights are believable which is a rarity in a martial arts movie... Purchased this movie myself for 2$ and was the best money i have ever spent! I constantly re-watch this movie!

This atrocity plays like MAD MAGAZINE does martial arts, only with zero sense of humor. Maybe its artsy-fartsy pretentiousness would play better with subtitles, but in English it's a disaster from start to finish. I cannot understand how in the world it got made. Nor, in truth, can I understand how those involved in making it could come to work every day. Indeed I have trouble understanding how in hell I made it through the entire film. I guess the only possible explanation is total disbelief. The plot is preposterous, a character who seem brain dead at one moment prove to be star attorney when it's convenient, and the action is clubfooted at best. As for the dialogue, maybe it's time for Mamet to hang it up -- or at least to head back to the stage.

Carter G. Woodson, the great Black historian, once spoke of the commercial minded being as a product of the migration of millions of people from rural settings and the farms to urban settings and the cities. When he spoke of this in THE NEGRO IN OUR HISTORY, I recognized immediately that the antithesis of the commercial minded being must perforce be the community minded being. David Mamet's 'REDBELT' revolves essentially around these two concepts. I realized upon reading Woodson's words that there appeared to always exist this uneasy relationship and tension between Commerce and Community, just as there is conflict in Nature between competition and cooperation. I also discovered viewing 'REDBELT' that not only does fighting come with a price for the participants, but out on the open market people will always be willing to sell tickets to the viewing public and put a price tag on it.Most people might become involved in half a dozen physical fights during their lifetime. That is usually enough for them to find other means of persuasion and ways to influence people. Others at the end of such disputes are startled to have it revealed to them that they have a taste for this kind of activity and see the end and outs of it really well. When I was a paper boy stacking bundles of newspapers into my wagon for the morning run, I observed there a fellow news handler who would sometimes get into scuffles with the other paper boys. Fights would break out here and there in the paper station and this one guy seemed to be particularly adept at hitting his foes in such a way that when the Manager separated him from his opponent, his adversary invariably would be left sporting a hickey on his forehead or jaw about the size of a golf ball. We all remembered fights where guys got up from the ground with bloody noses, black eyes and more often than not, just scratches. But these hickeys were different. They spoke of something more than flailing around hoping to land a lucky punch. We realized the deliverer of these blows was master of some technique that he was more than willing to try out on whomever got in his way. Later on, he came to understand that even this advantage was limited in its uses, but I won't go into that right now.'REDBELT' is a simple morality tale about a Martial Arts teacher who is devoted to instructing the rest of us who would rather not walk around for most of the day looking like someone hit us with a blunt instrument or blackjack, and yet at the same time don't want to compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Mike Terry, played here by Chiwetel Ejiofor, wants to provide a valuable community service to police officers and responsible citizens wishing to feel more secure about themselves in their surroundings. He wants to help others with the knowledge he has acquired through Life, and yet that does not exempt him from Murphy's Law.The more Mike Terry attempts to use his personal code of honor allied with his street smarts to solve the simple problems of his already financially strapped Dojo, the more steps he seems to take into a maze of relationships designed to strip him of that honor and leave him a defenseless pawn on the game board of commercial minded beings. The dramatic movement of good intentions gone awry and then more awry has to me verisimilitude despite logical inconsistencies that other reviewers have pointed out. Anyone who has ever attempted to fix a machine late at night in the basement when you would rather be in bed and you have to get up for work the next day, knows what I am talking about. While Sondra Terry, played by Alice Braga, lectures him about mounting bills that have to be paid, Mike insists that she '-don't worry-be happy-', because in his world of Black and White logic the good guys always win in the end.All the time the real world is scraping the paint off his car, shattering the storefront window of his Dojo, offering him a hot watch and working to promote his best ideas without his permission in a TV ad for Mixed Martial Arts. Behind all this pandemonium is the Almighty Dollar, demanding to be confronted and finally given its due. Even Mike's teachings about resolving conflicts with honor are called into question by calamitous events. Suddenly Life has become the teacher and invited Mike into its Dojo.This is a film I find myself not wanting to give too much away about. The tone and the mood is absorbing as you wonder what more could go wrong and how in the world could the fates conspire to stir such a soup for one man. There are those who thought the ending unraveled into sentimentality, but considering all that you see happen before this, it seemed oddly fitting to me. Just as Mike is revealed to have a childlike understanding of what the real world is all about, we come to feel that we have a childlike understanding of what the World of Honor and the Warrior Code is all about. Otherwise, why do men cling so tightly to these macho fantasies in their heart of hearts?Because some things must be earned and cannot be found on Craig's List or Ebay. But when a person has it, everyone can recognize the real thing from the counterfeit. It looks a certain way and it feels a certain way. I watched 'NIGHT AND THE CITY' the other evening, and was reminded of this film. I think I'll leave it at that, except to quote my friend martial artist Perry Morris, 'A wise person has the cognitive ability to recognize Truth.'