Hero clings to honor in corrupt fight world

Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Max Martini. Directed by David Mamet. Rated R (strong language). At metro theaters. 1 hour, 39 minutes.

Bottom line: Engrossing noir/samurai movie from David Mamet. Takers?

Peer pressure is tough, especially when it's pervasive, grown-up and institutionalized. In samurai movies, as in Westerns, the warrior is often faced with a choice between individual morality and fealty to the tribe. Individual morality tends to prevail until society can be established and impose order, though in contemporary samurai movies, like Jim Jarmusch's excellent "Ghost Dog," both choices can be rendered absurd by the circumstances.

This is not entirely so in David Mamet's tricky and engrossing "Redbelt," a contemporary noir with a samurai movie interior, as sincere, plaintive and strangely optimistic a movie as he's made.

In "Redbelt," the hero and sole guardian of the moral code is Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the owner of a jujitsu academy. The clan is the rapacious Brazilian jujitsu dynasty-in-the-making he has married into, and the problem is not that it is up to him to uphold what is honorable until society imposes order. This society couldn't care less about order —- it has embraced corruption at every level, and Terry happens to be the only stoic-slash-chump, depending on how you regard him ("You're addicted to poverty," his disgusted brother-in-law tells him), who is bothered by this.

Ejiofor brings a calm magnetism and a beatific serenity to his roles that have the effect of knocking you flat —- there's something about this guy that's messianic. From his first moments on the screen, as he talks his star pupil, police Officer Joe Collins (Max Martini), through a fight ("Commit to the move," he tells him. "You know the escape. You know the escape"), he emanates a certain trustworthiness and levelheadedness that make him seem like a bedrock of conviction. This is not a guy to be led easily astray.

Of course, "Redbelt" being a Mamet movie (he wrote and directed), the noir puzzle element is central to the story, replete with double crosses and other betrayals. Mike is one of two innocents (the other is Officer Joe) caught in a web that extends far beyond the parameters of professional fighting. It's a corrupt world in which morality and honor have been edged so far out that they're dwelling in the lunatic fringe.

I won't go into the plot machinations here, partly because much of the pleasure is in the surprises, partly because they're a little too far-fetched to withstand summary —- suffice it to say things get complicated. "I don't teach people to fight," Mike says on more than one occasion, "I teach them to prevail."

You know in your heart —- or at least you hope —-that Mike will have it in him to follow his own lessons, but the movie makes a good case for how hard this can be when the fight is between what's morally correct and what's economically expedient. Mamet leads his fighter further into a trap from which it seems he won't escape. But he knows the escape. He knows the escape.

SECOND OPINION

"David Mamet has taken a sturdy B-movie conceit —- a good man vs. the bad world, plus blood —- tricked it out with his rhythms, his corrosive words and misanthropy, and come up with a satisfying, unexpectedly involving B-movie that owes as much to old Hollywood as to Greek tragedy."

—- A.O. Scott, New York Times