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Redbelt | 2008 | R | - 3.6.8

A man (Chiwetel Ejiofor) running a Jiu-Jitsu school struggles to make ends meet until he saves a celebrity (Tim Allen) in a bar fight and it seems possible that he can finally turn his life around. However, a chance encounter one evening at the school ends up forcing him to consider entering a prizefighting competition, and he may end up losing everything. Also with Emily Mortimer, Alice Braga, Joe Mantegna, Rodrigo Santoro, Max Martini, Ricky Jay, Jose Pablo Cantillo. Directed by David Mamet. [1:39]

SEX/NUDITY 3 - Women wear low-cut tops and dresses in several scenes that reveal cleavage. A woman wears a short dress that reveals bare shoulders and legs to the thigh. Men are shown bare-chested in several fight and warm-up scenes. A woman wearing a bikini walks around a fight ring while fighters are being introduced. A woman undresses to a tank top and underwear, and puts on a dress while talking to her husband who stands with a towel around his shoulders (his bare chest is visible).
 A husband and wife kiss.
 A man tells another man that he fools around on his wife. A man tells another man that his wife is beautiful.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - We see a man slumped onto a table with a large bloody bullet hole in his head (we hear he committed suicide). A man moves toward a woman, she becomes nervous, she grabs a gun that is on a ledge, fires it toward the man, and strikes a plate glass window behind him shattering it.
 A man trying to break up a bar fight is attacked by several men who punch him, he fights back and they are all incapacitated, one man threatens him with a broken bottle and another slashes him on the arm with a knife (we see blood).
 A man is confronted by another man in a nightclub, after he orders a young woman a drink, and they shove each other several times, one punches the other in the face, and he punches and kicks him back. Two men fight: one is punched in the face (he has a bloody nose and mouth), and they punch and kick and flip each other until one is held around the throat and becomes unconscious.
 Two fighters fight: they knee and punch and kick each other, they throw each other to the mat, and they punch each other in the face (one has blood on his nose and mouth). Two fighters in a ring are prepared for a fight and one man has one arm tied down.
 A man knocks and throws several police and security guards to the ground.
 A man re-enacts an attack on a woman (he grabs her from behind and holds a fake knife to her throat), and he teaches her how to get into a position where she can stab him and she does three times.
 During a training session in a Jiu-Jitsu school, two men fight with flips, punches and kicks, they slam each other to the mat, and one holds the other around the throat and the fight ends; during another training session two men fight with flips and kicks, one is thrown to the mat and the other pulls away and is held back by another man to end the fight. Two men on a movie set practice hand-to-hand combat with knives for stunt staging; the two other men do the same thing.
 A woman tells a man that she was held by a man with a knife to her throat and raped. A woman confronts a man and blames him for her husband's suicide. A man talks about setting up a racial grudge match.

LANGUAGE 8 - 40 F-words and its derivatives, 1 sexual reference, 2 scatological terms, 3 anatomical terms, 4 mild obscenities, 3 religious profanities, 1 religious exclamation.

SUBSTANCE USE - People drink alcohol in a nightclub, a man drinks alcohol from a snifter, a man orders a glass of wine but does not drink from it, a woman drinks several alcoholic beverages, and a man says he drinks too much. A cigarette burns in an ashtray and we then see a man with the burning cigarette between his teeth, a man smokes a cigarette, a woman tries to light a cigarette but is told there is no smoking allowed (we see her later smoking elsewhere), and a man lights a cigarette in a nightclub and he is told to put it out and that it is a no smoking establishment. A woman is anxious and panicky when she cannot find an open pharmacy to refill a fraudulent prescription.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Defeat, honor, success, poverty, controlling emotions, business, making money, publicity, gimmicks, code of the warrior, the Samurai, conspiracy, intellectual property and copyright law, nobility, symbolism, betrayal, callousness, selling out, military service, authenticity, fixing fights, mixed martial arts.

MESSAGE - Even when a situation seems impossible, there's still an honorable way out.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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