Fight film
is no knockout

At the Movies
By Senitra Horbrook

While watching Never Back Down, I found myself wishing everyone would just back down already so the movie could be over.
Someone out there might like this movie — just not me. Not only does it feel like a rip-off of The Karate Kid and Fight Club, but substitute fighting for dancing and you also have the plots of movies like You Got Served and Step Up.
Before going in, my expectations were moderately low because I simply am not a fan of fighting. I was willing to give it a chance, thinking that it may have a decent storyline to offset the brutal fight scenes I would have to endure watching.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. Take the generic set-up from writer Chris Hauty (a troubled teenager who moves across the country with his family and discovers an underground world of mixed martial arts), add it to a generic love triangle plot and you get a movie directed by Jeff Wadlow where the protagonist is the underdog who comes out on top (in both love and war) at the end.
So if none of that matters to you, by all means go see Never Back Down. Or, go see Never Back Down if you want to see men with rock-hard abs and bulging biceps. Lead actors Sean Faris, Cam Gigandet and Djimon Hounsou obviously trained long and hard for their roles and spend plenty of time shirtless as proof for the audience.
Faris plays the troubled teenager Jake Tyler, whose footage of a football-game brawl landed on the Internet shortly before his family moved from the Midwest to Orlando. Word travels fast that this kid can "bang" and the school’s champion fighter Ryan McCarthy (Gigandet) wants to take him on. After being tricked into fighting by the movie’s obligatory hot blonde Baja Miller (Amber Heard), Jake loses badly and wants to avenge his loss. He seeks out master Jean Roqua (Hounsou) to teach and train him on mixed martial arts.
Hounsou felt like he really gave the role his best effort; the problem was that he didn’t have much to work with.
So what is mixed martial arts anyway? I had no idea, so I sought out one of my favorite experts — the Internet. Also known as ultimate fighting, mixed martial arts is "an intense and evolving combat sport in which competitors use interdisciplinary forms of fighting that include jiu-jitsu, judo, karate, boxing, kickboxing, wrestling and others to their strategic and tactical advantage in a supervised match," according to a definition on the Ultimate Fighting Championship Web site.
The young male demographic this movie is trying to appeal to the most may be the most disappointed. While the fight scenes were quite believable — well, at least I believed it looked like those punches and kicks really hurt — people who take mixed martial arts seriously may be less than satisfied at the way the film portrays the sport as something that only sadists enjoy.
Ryan, the antagonist, fights because he gets sheer pleasure out of beating the daylights out of someone, not because of the art or sport of it. And for all of Jean Roqua’s preaching of no fighting outside the gym, fighting sure is glorified as hundreds of people turn out to watch the big fight at the end.
So not only is Never Back Down full of fight and teen movies clichés, it’s also hypocritical. That’s not a great combination for a movie. For all the time Never Back Down spends hitting, I’d have to say it misses the mark by a mile. ••
Movie Grade: D