With Mamet, you know what you’re going to get. To a certain extent. You see an artist who has a cadence, a cadence his stars, whomever they are, will adopt. And the man is a master of his craft. The man knows how to build a narrative. He knows how to shape characters. Shape them sharply, quickly. You quickly learn who these characters are. In a world of Mixed Martial Arts.

Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejofor) teaches a mixed martial arts class. His business is weak. His wife Sondra (Alice Braga) is concerned with their finances and wants to get a loan of some sort. An accident happens when Laura Black (Emily Mortimer) shows up and accidentally shoots out his window. She’s a lawyer, a drug addict, and a rape victim. Terry is a man at the end of his trail. He goes to a bar, and movie star Chet Frank (Tim Allen) gets into a fight, to which Terry takes out a room full of guys in a right quick fashion. Since Chet is something of an action figure, Chet seduces Terry into his fold, but all is not what it seems, and betrayal is in the wings.

From there, it becomes about one man’s desire to be noble and true to his world. To reveal more would to spoil the fun, but Mamet does a good job of changing the stakes and needs late enough in the game to make it interesting. But he also does it in a classically Mametian way, and the way the piece fit together, you can’t help but admire the precision. Sadly this was sold as a art film, when it’s really better sold as an action movie. I don’t say that to question marketing, but this is a better done action film than the world is usually used to. When compared to the similar Never Back Down, this triumphs and it’s unfortunate it got shuffled off. Sometimes that’s the problem with a pedigree.

The cast is excellent, and Ejiofor has the chops to be a leading man. Here, it’s his, and he sells it. There’s also familiar faces like Rebecca Pidgeon, and Joe Mantenga, while Cathy Cahlin Ryan (best known for her work in The Shield) has a memorable turn as a distraught wife. You also get a solid piece of acting from Tim Allen, and Emily Mortimer confirms her credentials as the sneakiest weapon cinema has for great female acting. In the canon of Mamet, it’s an interesting diversion, but in that, in accepting some of the cadences of genre, it also reveals himself in ways that some of his other works do not. Nothing shows character like challenge, and it’s great to see that Mamet can deliver the action, though his idea of it is the ideology of the film itself. It’s quick, brutal and efficient, but there is poetry in that.

Sony Picture Classics presents the film in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and in Dolby Digital 5.1 TrueHD. The transfer is nothing short of immaculate, and this is a fairly subdued but still impressive surround track. Extras include a commentary with Mamet and Randy Couture, who appears in the film, and is something of a MMA expert. There’s a Behind the Scenes (20 min.) and a piece “Inside Mixed Martial Arts (a beginners course, 19 min.), a Q&A with the director (26 min.), an interview with MMA expert Dana White (17 min.), Fighter Profiles (4 min.), The Magic of Cyril Takayama (4 min.), the theatrical trailer and bonus trailers. There’s also BD-Live content, which is currently unavailable, but should be when the disc streets.