Watched this on the plane yesterday and thought it was a bag of shit with multiple unrelated plot threads and storylines.
It has got some english guy who plays a BJJ black-belt whose classes consist of knife defense and aikido moves and a blue belt that tools his brown belt prize student.
Anyway he hates competing because it isnt pure and weakens the fighter.
He is married to a real bitch of a woman who happens to be the Royce Gracie's sister, and she makes him go beg to Rorion for money - The Persian king from 300 plays Rorion who runs the IFA with Bob Meyrowitz, One of the Machado bros. plays Royce Gracie who is their star fighter.
Anyway lots of ridiculously unrelated shit happens to do with some mad woman that got teh rape, and Tim Allen from Tool Time plays Chuck Norris. For some reason Black Belt guy saves him in a bar fight and then he is indebted top him and offers to really improve his life by getting him producer credits on his new film and buying some fabric off his wife.
He also gives him a shonky watch that he gives to his prize student. Anyway the student is a cop and gets suspended because the watch is hot so he kills himself rather than explain it came from BJJ guy and he got it from Chuck Norris manager.
Anyway Chuck Norris cuts all ties to BJJ guy and fucks him over because his manager gave him the watch and he had the temerity to deal with it discretely rather than go to the police - which is fucking bizarre.
So to get some money to pay off all his debts he enters the IFA for a 50k flat fee - under all this is a stupid story line about a handicapping mechanism that is used to restrict one fighter in each bout.
Bjj guys finds out this is fixed, and is horrified because Helio is in the crowd watching, so he goes to try and tell Bill 'Superfoot' Wallace who is played by Randy Couture who for some reason got the third credit on the film despite being no more than a cameo.
Anyway he gets in a big brawl back stage with Royce where they take turns putting each other in to clean submissions without actually finishing them, until eventually Royce gets choked out.
Then he goes in to the stage, Helio comes down crying and gives him a redbelt - oh and Enson Inoue who was playing Sakuraba gives BJJ guy his dad's sword or something because he bashed Royce.
What a shitty film - full of completely pointless filler to get to the final fight.
Now I don't need to see it :-)
lol@him getting his redbelt that way
Kirik - Now I don't need to see it :-)
I was thinking the exact opposite. After that review, I MUST see it :)
i saw it for the 1st time last night.
thats definitely one way to look at it. the comparisons are all too obvious in some cases...royce & helio especially. that part alone is enough to throw off any attempt to watch it as "not an mma movie". since reading all the reviews about it here i really tried to watch it from an objective standpoint, without prejudging it as an attempt at an mma film...but the appearance of machado, couture, inoue, etc makes it really hard to do that.
still, its not impossible to enjoy it...if you can get past the whole mma with a handicap thing, and the few seemingly meaningless side plots, its not a terrible movie overall. not good, but not terrible.
I guess I shouldn't bother downloading the 6 gig HD version of the movie??? LOL!
Brilliant review!!!
Kirik - Now I don't need to see it :-)
Sweet! Me too!
the real question is could this "red belt" beat mr miagi and the karate kid?
I thought it was a great movie.
It gets a lot of hate from the MMA community, because there is a bunch of idiots in the MMA community. (TUF fans)
Fuzzy Dunlop - its like an old school martial arts movie, nothing for mma
this is how it felt to me as well. if you can put aside any expectations of it being some kind of vehicle for mma, you can enjoy it.
think of it as involving martial arts in the storyline...not mma. the premise for the mma/jiu jitsu parts of the story were all visibly influenced by the vale tudo/gracie challenge/ufc 1 era anyway, not modern mma...so its not so unbelievable that some crazy setup like that could've transpired. 100 to 1 says crazier shit than that was considered in those early days....remember the WOW idea, with barbed wire and fireballs and whatnot that was thrown around before the ufc was actually developed.
Sorry TS...you don't know shit about films
Figures some meathead wouldn't like a Mamet flick.
I'm a Mamet fan and this was a pretty mediocre Mamet film. Parts of it early on are good, but it just gets increasingly ridiculous. And the ending is just an embarassment. I found the above review rather confusing, if somewhat amusing. My review was posted here:
http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/mma.cfm?go=forum_framed.posts&thread=1242626
Suggesting that people who don't like REDBELT for some reason do like Never Back Down is just inane. No one has made a good (fictional) MMA film yet.
Wow, a comparison to Raging Bull. The guy does a backflip off of a wall to get out of a rear naked choke.
"There's always an escape. There's always an escape."
I should've looked to escape the movie when the one armed fighting started.
The only thing worse than that film was this review.
Glengary Glenross, Ronin, Spanish Prisoner, Spartan. David Mamet is a brilliant wriiter of character, and dialogue. Forget that knowlwdge of the Jiu Jitsu world we have, and enjoy the film noir world that Mamaet creates as it story unfolds, with a fresh set of eyes. We all know that taking "the red pill" wont give you the power to dodge bullets, but that didnt make the Matrix less enjoyable.Suspention of disbelief. Allow yourself to enjoy the characters, and dont get hung up on the "real world of Bjj/mma".
Just read nobones's post above, and we are saying the same thing
biggest problem i have is the situations and people reacting to them lack realism. You just know this stuff don't happen in real life. but Mamet does all this with a straight face.
Fuzzy Dunlop -
go look up "REAL KUMITIE's" in 1970's Japan, if you got past the 1st 50 opponents in a Kumitie, you must face the next bunch with a handicap
it has been around for a long long time bro
do you think they just made this up?
There's no way anyone wins a real fight against a similarly skilled MMA fighter with a handicap as depicted in the film. The margin of victory is so slim in competitive MMA that the disadvantage of the handicap would be far too much for the handicapped fighter to overcome.
lol at the TUF fanboys loving this film.
You lot are the same lot that spunked your load when Gollum sunk the hooks on Bilbo.
This film was W.A.N.K the gash comparisons to early era ufc were embarrasing. The sub plots were pure stupidity.
It was poor writing, plain and simple. There is no way you can compare this to Glengarry Glen Ross.
What impact exaclty did the rape victim have on the plot line, other than being involved with the Tim Allen plot line which also had NOTHING to do with the main story.
Why did he fuck up Royce back stage? Oh - because he was trying to get to Bil Wallace - and what the fuck was he goign to do exactly? Fuck his employers over by telling live tv it was all fixed????
And lol at Helio giving him a redbelt for that. Bag of shit film
I liked it becaue of how everything tied together.
He casually mentions that there is only one redbelt and how the belt is for nothing more than holding your pants up.
And he doesn't like competing or fighting unless he is forced to. He wasn't physically confronted into fighting, but the circumstances in his life dictated that he needed to be in this tourney.
Then, he sees the guy from the bar that was doing magic tricks rigging the fight. Another plot thread come to fruition.
It ends with him being in the throwdown of the event, which isn't even in the ring. It's a real fight that he is forced into.
Him getting the redbelt validaded the code the guy had been living by that seemingly wasn't working. His wife fucked him over, his cop buddy killed himself, the lady shooting out his window came back to bite him in the ass, Tim Allen stole his idea. All because he was just trying to be a nice guy. The Rdbelt solves it all.
Now the guy is uber famous as a Rdbelt, and no doubt his academy got HUGE after that.
I also appreciate the constant ownings at the hands of Jiu Jitsu. He didn't even have to take it to the ground half the time. Dude is a bad mo fo.