Bar scene!-SCARY!

Did any one else find the scene in bar where Tim Allen gets hassled by locals and is saved by EjioFor's Mike Terry, disturbing? We've seen countless scenes like this in films but way Mamet builds it and how Dennis Keiffer, the bar bully plays it, makes it look all too real!

He starts picking Allen and doesn't give him room to walk away. The out of shape-Allen surprisingly stands up to him briefly but then the beer bottles brake, knives come out and they're ready to do him in and that's when Terry steps in. In Hollywood films you usually anticipate those moments but in here, as in real life things come out from left field and escalate very fast. It looked to me like a real bar brawl!

Mamet is very good building threat in violence. Another scene that comes to mind, was in Homicide (still Mamet's masterpiece IMO), where Joe Mantegna's detective and Afro-American FBI-man get into fight, start calling each other by racial names, then others join in and it threatens to become a squadroom riot.

As director Mamet is hit and miss: something went terribly wrong in Spartan, but House Of Games, Homicide and Redbelt are terrific films. And as others have stated, the ending of Redbelt is very sad and moving.