Redbelt (Blu-ray)

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As a playwright, David Mamet ("Glengarry, Glen Ross," "Faustus") is probably best known for his smart and profanity-laced dialogue, often involving down-and-outs. As a screenwriter ("The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Wag the Dog") his intelligent, edgy writing helped drive studies of ordinary characters who often find themselves in extraordinary situations. That's why it's a bit of a head-snapper to see that he's written and directed this straightforward martial arts picture, which has at its core an old Western formula.

Instead of a skilled stranger who rides into town and takes on the establishment--but only after he's forced to, following pressure or often the death of someone close to him--we get Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the black-belt proprietor of Southside Jiu-Jitsu who clearly has the skills to compete for prizes, but prefers to be the Yoda-like sage whose refrain to pupils is "There's always a way out. You just have to find it."

He says this to a cop--it turns out Mike trains a lot of cops--when the cop's sparring opponent is clearing kicking the crap out of him and he's a few seconds shy of passing out. Heck, we're a few seconds from passing out, just watching the brutality of this "class." And when a discomboberated stranger (Emily Mortimer) wanders into the place one late rainy night and this woman later reveals the source of her skittishness and paranoia--she was raped at knifepoint--what does her would-be instructor do to show her he actually does have something to teach her? He grabs this poor traumatized woman from behind and holds a rubber knife to her neck and, half coaching and half shouting, teaches her how she could have slid the knife to the side, pulled back, and stabbed the crap out of her attacker. Therapeutic? Uh, maybe. Questionable methods? Certainly. But moments like these provide some of the most interest in an otherwise standard story about needing money to pay the bills and therefore entering a tournament.

The other oddball moments that keep this from being a complete remake of "Karate Kid" and countless other martial arts films involve Mike's unexpected recruitment to serve as technical advisor and instructor on the set of a war movie. That could have provided some real interest. Instead, the characters--like Tim Allen as a movie star, Joe Mantegna as his seedy manager--make this feel more like a movie of the week, and some of the scenes are so obviously inserted for the single purpose of driving Mike to finally try his hand at winning the tournament prize money that they're clunky or unintentionally funny. When one of his prize students ends up dead, indirectly because of him, Mike is at the house just after it's presumably happened. And the wife who confronts him? Is she full of grief at having her husband so suddenly removed from her life? Is she worried about him or the loss of him? Not really. This woman, who's apparently the world's staunchest Darwinian, keeps waving a fistful of bills in his face and saying, "Who's going to pay the rent, who's going to pay the bills, who's going to take care of me now . . . You?" Then, later as Mike is pouring through a stack of printed materials, what does he find at the bottom of the pile? An announcement for that martial arts tournament! That kind of hokey heavy-handedness all but negates some sympathetic performances by Mortimer and Ejiofor, and the atmosphere of isolation and otherworldliness that Mamet seemed to so carefully cultivate elsewhere in the film. And all poor Alica Braga can do as his wife is to stand in the wings like window dressing and remind her husband of the obvious.