Image details: Premiere Of "Redbelt" At The 2008 Tribeca Film Festival served by picapp.com

David Mamet’s movies and plays come as close to a boxing match as written words can. His actors dance around each other, they throw verbal jabs, they’re constantly testing each other’s will, they slyly move in for the kill, they plot their actions well in advance, and eventually try for the win. His movies always have a winner and a loser. There is hard-hearted competition, there are feints, there is macho posturing, there is constant deception, and there is a concrete decision and result which itself somehow borders on ambiguity.

So it’s only natural that Mamet’s next movie Redbelt, which opens today, revolves around fighting, specifically mixed martial arts. It’s cast fittingly includes one of the 80’s most beloved and tortured boxers: Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. There’s aways the sense that Boom Boom could have been a storied lightweight but his fateful 1982 match against Duk Koo Kim changed that. Read Ron Borges terrific ESPN retrospective if you were too young to remember what happened that night at Caesars Palace.

But after Kim’s untimely death, Mancini wasn’t the same. The fire and the drive were understandably gone. Mancini began acting in 1986 and has appeared in a number of forgettable films. Still, his legendary fast speech and warm tough guy image, a role Tony Danza would parlay into a fruitful career, are the perfect fit for a Mamet film. It’s a wonder they haven’t crossed paths before.

Mancini concurred in the a maxboxing.com interview, “I’ve been a fan of David Mamet’s writing for years without ever meeting him,” said Mancini. “I don’t understand Shakespeare, even if it’s English. (Laughs) My Shakespeare is Dave Mamet, Cliff Odets, Sam Henry Kass. They write the way I would talk. So when I got a chance to meet him, it was such a pleasure, and then seeing he was just a knockaround guy, I became friends with him.”

Redbelt has thus far received positive reviews, including this one in the Village Voice which called it “an entertaining tale of high-stakes martial arts.” We here at jabandgrabble.com are eager to see it but if you see it first comment here and tell us what you thought.

Post from: EveryJoe

Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini Stars in New David Mamet Film