Red Belt

I saw David Mamet's new film, Red Belt last night. I loved it. Great fight scenes too.

The star Chiwetel Ejiofor is a great actor, I just hang on his every word, he played the honor-obsessed interplanetary government Space Martial in Joss Whedon's Serenity, which I also loved.

This film is from the Theater of the Absurd tradition. The highly implausible changes that occur in the film are meant to further the metaphors which expand in significance through out the film.

Because there are so many important twists in the film, I'm not going to tell you what happens, but feel free to talk about the film's content in the comments section after you have seen it, and I will too.

As my regular readers know, I'm neither a big fan of Mixed Martial Arts, nor of Honor--and this film is about both. Because the film is meant to be absurd, it would be foolish to go out on a limb and try to say what it is "about." Still you've got to love staring into Ejiofor's passionate eyes when he finally hands his star student his black belt and says, "It's just to hold up your pants!"

It is also hard to miss the digs at Mixed Martial Art's "working class" pretensions, if you want to know more about David Mamet's personal views check out this article from the Village Voice, but be warned--cognitive dissonance may occur.

The world of martial arts that we all know and love has its own logic. If you try to apply Martial Arts Logicâ„¢ to everything else in your life you'll get incongruence, cognitive dissonance, crazy interactions, deep meaning, and simultaneously find superior isolation and brotherhood (or sisterhood) in unexpected places.

Excuse me dear reader, I must leave you now. I have to go fight my way into the kitchen, and through ultimate will power and sacrifice, I will make myself a disciplined sandwich, with maximum power pickles--so that I can fight for freedom, defend honor, and prevail in my duty to bring humor to blog-land.