REDBELT
Written and directed by David Mamet; director of photography, Robert Elswit; edited by Barbara Tulliver; music by Stephen Endelman
With: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Emily Mortimer, Alice Braga, Tim Allen, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Rodrigo Santoro, Ricky Jay, Joe Mantegna, Rebecca Pidgeon, David Paymer, Max Martini, and John Machado (Augusto Silva). Rated R. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes
Reviewed by Joel Johnson

David Mamet started his career as a writer. He has progressed in the entertainment business from playwright to screenwriter and finally to film director, but writing has always been his strength. He has consistently produced scripts with dialogue that is tough, lacerating, and powerful. The storylines have often been clever and convoluted yet fitting together like an elaborate puzzle. Mamet’s weakness is his lack of a strong sense of visual style. There’s even a tendency for his films to feel flattened and constricted, as if limited by the very finite dimensions of a theater stage instead of expanded to fit the real world in which the film is set. Redbelt certainly presented a real opportunity to use visuals in an interesting way since the film’s story is set in exotic and vivid realms of martial arts, Hollywood glitterati, and Brazilian expatriates. His plays and films have frequently focused on how people respond to adversity that sorely challenges their integrity and honor. Redbelt clearly follows in the same vein.

Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a man devoted to a code of conduct that is rooted in his martial art. He is struggling to keep his martial art school financially afloat but resists crassly using his martial art as popular entertainment and particularly debasing it as a staged competition. Ejiofor is a versatile and talented actor who naturally exudes the dignity and intelligence that are essential for this role. While Ejiofor-as well as Emily Mortimer, Alice Braga, Rodrigo Santoro, and Tim Allen in a rare dramatic role-is new to Mamet’s film troupe, there are several familiar faces from past Mamet films such as Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay, Joe Mantegna, and David Paymer.

Unfortunately, the work of all these talented actors appears to have been wasted. The film has two basic problems. While there was an opportunity to be creative in using imagery and music to give context and vitality to the film, Mamet’s failure to fully realize this opportunity appears more stark than in films with more prosaic settings. In creating the challenge that Mike Terry has to address, Mamet has essentially created a Rube Goldberg-style trap for his lead character perpetrated by almost everyone else in the film. These two problems seriously undermine the film’s credibility. There’s an impressive fight scene at the end of the film, but if the audience has become incredulous, then they may not care by then.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Directed by Louis Leterrier; written by Zak Penn, based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; director of photography, Peter Menzies Jr.; edited by John Wright, Rick Shaine and Vincent Tabaillon; music by Craig Armstrong
With: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell, and William Hurt. PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes.

Three stars out of four

Reviewed by Joel Johnson

After a less than spectacular big screen version from Ang Lee (Hulk) five years ago, the gamma-infected Bruce Banner returns to your local cineplex. Edward Norton has inherited the Bruce Banner role from Eric Bana while newcomer Louis Leterrier takes over the director’s reins from Lee. The Incredible Hulk is just Leterrier’s third directorial effort, following Danny the Dog and Transporter 2. Fortunately, the audience will not be spending an inordinate amount of time pondering why a major franchise has been entrusted to such a neophyte. The reason is that Leterrier does an effective job at keeping the story moving and then allowing Edward Norton, William Hurt, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, and Tim Blake Nelson to tell the story.

This is probably no more clearly illustrated than in the opening sequences of Hulk and The Incredible Hulk. Lee provided an extended prologue to Hulk that furnishes the backstory on Bruce Banner’s life leading up to his becoming infected with gamma and then becoming the Hulk. This deliberate unfolding of Banner’s early years played more like something to be tolerated while waiting for the film to start (like the ad-laden Regal First Look that precedes films at my local cineplex) than an integrated part of the movie. This frustration of audience expectations probably created a wave of negative reaction from which the film never recovered. Leterrier, by contrast, provides an extended series of brief scenes that takes just a couple of minutes to help the audience get up to speed with the story.

The story begins in Brazil, which is where Banner is holed up, trying not to experience the feelings that will transform him into the Hulk. However, General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Hurt) does not want to lose his living and breathing potential weapon. After bringing to Brazil a heavy “boots-on-the-ground” presence, including elite trooper Emil Blonsky (Roth), the film unfurls the first of three major combat confrontations sequences involving the Hulk. Unbriefed as to how formidable the Hulk can be, Blonsky is very impressed and eventually offers the sincerest form of flattery-imitation. This sets up the ultimate confrontation in downtown Manhattan.

Along the way, the audience is reintroduced to Banner’s erstwhile girlfriend Betty Ross (Liv Tyler taking over the role played by Jennifer Connelly in Hulk) and meets helpful scientist Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson). Each helps efficiently move the story forward without either making very much of an indelible emotional impression. This is most successfully accomplished by William Hurt. Hurt’s General Ross devotion to successfully weaponizing gamma-poisoning dwarfs even devotion to his family. He evokes a pretty powerful visceral reaction. Edward Norton keeps the audience’s sympathy for Bruce Banner even if we are kept at arm’s length from fully understanding what it’s like to walk in his shoes. This film relies most on its violent set piece confrontations between the Hulk, the U.S. military, and Blonsky’s gamma-incarnation-the Abomination. It is odd to find oneself rooting against American troops, and I found it hard not to wonder how many dead and wounded soldier and civilian casualties would be expected from these confrontations. In a non-CGI universe, the toll would have been substantial, and never is loss of life acknowledged. The Incredible Hulk is an effective film that maintains audience interest even as it seems to herald better and more interesting films to follow in the franchise series.