The Ultimate Measure of a Man.

95. Redbelt (David Mamet, 2008)

Redbelt is David Mamet's morality tale about the unquestionable value of honor in comparison with the petty emptiness of excess and greed. Chiwetel Ejifor stars as Mike Terry, a Jiu-Jitsu instructor, who through a series of events is faced with tall obstacles and hard times. Mamet's script is a precise exercise in the use of accepted pure character traits such as honesty, integrity, and loyalty in conflict with their general counterparts: deceit, corruption, and betrayal. Terry's views are put to a test as the film knocks the wind out of its protagonist as if the picture itself is trying to find the man's breaking point. However, his true strength is not measured by his battles in the ring but by his own convictions, and by the end of the film we find that Mr. Terry, in that regard, has no breaking point.

Redbelt has two distinct stars, its deftly constructed script and its lesser known leading man, Chiwetel Ejifor. Ejifor must be one of the most under appreciated actors working today. Primarily recognizable in supporting roles in such films as Children of Men (2006), Talk to Me (2007), and Inside Man (2006) he's a versatile actor who appears to be able to do a rare thing in the film industry, leave his ego aside. In Redbelt he has the chance to show his worth as a leading man and he delivers a performance that makes him not only one of the more inspiring figures in the last ten years, his portrayal of Mike Terry turns the characters into a quintessential modern day hero in the tradition of the great Takashi Shimura in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954).

A comparison to earlier samurai films is distinctly appropriate, especially with that of Seven Samurai, a film in which seven men defend a persecuted village for no more than a few meals each day. Mike Terry's competition does not reside in marketed bouts to earn money but rather he is in constant competition with himself. A desire to not only better himself in body, but in mind as well. It's a film about knowing one's self and one's own strengths and using that strength to uphold one's own integrity. Such is the importance of the words of the late Martin Luther King Jr., "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

10 Films of 2008:

10. Redbelt (David Mamet)