Redbelt & The Unknown Woman

by Marc Glassman.

Redbelt. David Mamet, script & direction Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofur (Mike Terry), Alice Braga (Sondra Terry), Tim Allen (Chet Frank), Emily Mortimer (Laura), Joe Mantegna (Jerry Weiss), Max Martini (Officer Joe), Rebecca Pidgeon (Zena Frank), Rodrigo Santoro (Sondra’s brother), Ricky Jay (Marty)

The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta). Giussepe Tornatore, director & co-script w/Massimo De Rita. Music: Ennio Morricone.
Starring: Xenia Rappoport (Irena), Clara Dossena (Thea Adacher), Claudia Gerini (Valeria Adacher), Pierfrancesco Favino (Donato Adacher), Piera Degli Esposti (Gina), Alessandro Haber (Doorman)

Redbelt

A curious combination of virtuoso martial arts scenes, film noir plot twists, brilliant theatrical dialogue and Eastern philosophy, Redbelt comes astonishingly close to being a small masterpiece. Even the acclaimed writer and director David Mamet can try to keep too many balls in the air, though, and that’s the case with this tightly wound philosophical thriller. Despite some superb performances and skillfully etched scenes, his own plot machinations force Mamet into a conclusion that doesn’t satisfactorily resolve the many elements that the story has put forward. Still, Redbelt takes viewers on a journey well worth taking—if their inclination is towards independent, slightly confrontational cinema.

Chiwetel Ejiofur gives a riveting performance as Mike Terry, a jujitsu expert running a failing martial arts gym in downtown Los Angeles. Mike is saintly in his clear focus on pursuing the warrior path. His Brazilian wife Sondra is less impressed; she has gotten tired of Mike’s purer-than-thou attitude, which marks a sharp contrast with her brothers, who run a low-life bar and engage in shady activities, all in the furtherance of making a fast buck.

When a show window in Mike’s gym is shattered by an accidental gun discharge that would implicate innocent people, Sondra insists that Mike get a loan from her brothers to pay for the damages. While at their bar, Mike saves movie star Chet Frank (Tim Allen, underplaying for a change) from being beaten up by local tough guys looking to make a rep by pummeling a celebrity.

The grateful star invites Mike and Sondra for dinner and, for a while, it seems as if their life will take an upbeat Hollywood turn. But this is Mamet territory where no good deed goes unpunished. All too soon, Frank abandons them and they’re far further in debt than before.

In a collision of Mamet’s tough as nails Pulitzer Prize winning play Glengarry Glen Ross and the Oscar winning boxing chestnut Rocky, money drives Mike to temporarily abandon his principles and agree to fight in a mixed martial arts bout for $50,000.

But will Mike truly give up his ideals? Even in a corrupt world, Mamet and the wonderful Ejiofur almost make you believe in noir writer Raymond Chandler’s old dictum that “down these mean streets a man must go who is himself not mean.” And that may be the purest piece of Hollywood hokum in this mixed blessing of a film.

The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta)

A complex Hitchcockian thriller, The Unknown Woman comes from its native Italy festooned with honours. It nearly swept the David di Donatellos, Italy’s Oscars, garnering prizes for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Cinematographer and Score and went on to be the Italian entry for last year’s Foreign Film Academy Award. While the film didn’t win the Oscar, its director, Giuseppe Tornatore, did get the prize previously for his masterpiece Cinema Paradiso. And the film’s composer, Ennio Morricone, is one of the most esteemed creators of soundtracks in the world.

The film doesn’t disappoint, operating on a high level of accomplishment, technically. Russian actress Xenia Rappoport stunned audiences in Europe with her performance as the mysterious, damaged Irena, an immigrant from Ukraine, who will stop at nothing to enter the world of the Adachers, jewelers who live in a beautiful old-fashioned apartment in northern Italy, with their daughter Thea.

Through a series of shockingly abrupt flashbacks, viewers realize that Irena has suffered from extreme sexual abuse and that there’s more than meets the eye in her attraction to young Thea. But—and here’s the drawback with the film—the convoluted plot makes it impossible to figure out whom you should identify with and, indeed, what is going on. Is Irena a psychopath or a sad heroine?

That can be a good thing, of course: everyone loves a mystery. Things do resolve satisfactorily in the end but many audience members may have given up caring about Irena’s and Thea’s destinies by that time. And that is a mistake.

While there’s much to admire in The Unknown Woman, this film will leave North American audiences cold.