‘Redbelt’ slides from sublime to ridiculous

You’d be forgiven for looking at the poster for “Redbelt” and thinking, “Wait — it’s a martial arts movie… directed by David Mamet… and starring Tim Allen?” While Mamet uses the world of hand-to-hand combat to tell a story about honor and redemption rather than to make a slam-wham-bam action movie, the film’s intricate plot begins to collapse the moment the lights come up and you begin thinking about the story.

The always-terrific Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Mike Terry, the owner and chief instructor of a Los Angeles Jiu-Jitsu academy. Mike has always eschewed professional fighting, seeking instead a purer devotion to the art of self-defense. As the movie begins, Mike has a night in which several seemingly unrelated incidents will have major impact upon his life.

First of all, jittery lawyer Laura (Emily Mortimer) enters the studio after accidentally hitting a car outside. Cop Joe (Max Martini), one of Mike’s prize students, goes to help her, but she freaks out and picks up his gun, shooting out the front window. Joe realizes she’s upset and decides not to press charges. Mike’s wife Sondra (Alice Braga), haranguing Mike about how the window repair is only going to worsen the academy’s already-precarious financial situation, sends him to the nightclub owned by her brother Bruno (Rodrigo Santoro) to borrow money.

At the club, Mike learns that Bruno and promoter Marty (Ricky Jay) are putting together a major fight between the Brazilian and Japanese Jiu-Jitsu champs, and they attempt to talk Mike into fighting on the undercard. He refuses, and on his way out, he rescues movie star Chet (Tim Allen) from getting his rump handed to him in a bar fight.

Things get entertainingly twisty from here, so I won’t go into further details. Suffice it to say that even though “Redbelt” flirts with melodrama — all it needs is a boxing violinist with a sister who needs an operation — the plot elements chick-chick-chick into place like tumblers in the hands of a master safecracker. Mamet’s love of the confidence scam is reflected in the tangled web that unfolds in the film, but Mamet is also pulling one over on the viewers. Once you can step back from “Redbelt,” you realize that it’s one of those plots that calls for a far-reaching conspiracy that involves lots and lots of people with nefarious intent, all of whom can almost perfectly predict what innocent people will do in the future.

Still, even if the plotting is overcooked, it’s a treat to see Ejiofor mix it up with Mamet regulars like Ricky Jay, Joe Mantegna and David Paymer. If only the women were given as much to do — while Mortimer gets some moving moments, the other actresses don’t come off nearly as well, with Braga being a two-dimensional shrew, Cathy Cahlin Ryan giving a painfully flat performance as Joe’s wife, and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mrs. Mamet) once again proving she’s the poster girl for nepotism.

While “Redbelt” won’t satisfy the bloodlust of hard-core martial-arts fans, it does address the sport’s codes of honor in an interesting way. Just don’t be surprised when writer-director Mamet jumps you from behind.