'Competition weakens the fighter'

Redbelt is a very mediocre movie.

A couple of points: I can't get past the idea of a rigged MMA competition. A handicapping contest would never be sanctioned by the state. To pre-empt all the bombardments of apologist remarks ("it's a movie", "you don't understand the metaphor", etc), I will say this: If David Mamet (+whoever else wrote this script) is an educated and knowledgeable story-teller and capable of making a well-researched MMA movie, then the viewer deserves at least SOME plausibility. The situations in the movie are stretched to accomodate martial arts mythology, an impotent 'warrior's code', and a warped sense of what makes a fighter a fighter in today's world.

You can't tie a fighter's appendages , it's insanity. No one can win like that... and moreover, no one would fight like that. States wouldn't sanction it, fighters wouldn't fight in it, and I wouldn't watch it. It's garbage, plain and simple, and if Mamet and supporters can excuse this inexcusably lazy backdrop meant to illuminate the warrior ethos amidst corruption, then Redbelt 2 might as well be MMA deathmatches on top of planks with fighters balancing precariously over a tank of piranhas. There's better ways to show the main character as an honest warrior.

"Competition weakens the fighter" is a ridiculous platitude. The only time I ever hear it is when self-proclaimed martial arts masters hailing from some alphabetized and oscure form of donkey karate kung fu need a soundbyte with which to sell their bogus and outmoded martial arts to skeptical people who ask "Well, what about the UFC?" Competition is the only way to make a name for you in the world of mixed martial arts in Brazilian jujitsu. In my school, it is the only way to get promoted. If you can't compete in either of those two activities (with rules), expect to have serious deficiencies as a fighter, whether or not you think those activities accurately simulate fights. They don't, but BJJ does work against a resisting opponent, and MMA is the closest simulation of a steet fight we have without re-introducing death matches. Consider this parting shot: Without competition, MMA would not exist and Brazilian Jujitsu would never have evolved. The fighter who disdains competition is unproven, and the writer who glamourizes him is clueless.

Which is why I think this is just a lazy, Hollywood-ized script. To me, Redbelt capitalizes and glamourizes the MMA fad just as relentlessly as Never Back Down, it just tries to be more dignified. It's disappointing to me because I looked forward to Redbelt and what I got was cineplex fodder. It was either made by a writing staff that knows nothing about MMA or BJJ, or it was not meant for MMA or BJJ fans. Sadly, if you consider the casting of Randy Couture, Machado, Enson Inoue (Sorry if I mentioned the wrong Inoue), and the half-assed techniques attempted in this film... the latter seems implausible.

And by the way: the fight scenes were kind of stupid. BJJ has no strikes. The armbar escapes were pretty unconvincing. All the chokes were loose as *beep* The arm triangle can be escaped while you're standing but if you're on the ground getting choked, you're screwed. But then again, isn't the point of BJJ to take your opponent to the ground? The only cool technique I saw was the flying armbar in the beginning.