Title: Never Back Down
Cast: Sean Faris, Djimon Hounsou, Amber Heard, Cam Gigandet, Evan Peters, Leslie Hope
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Producers: Craig Baumgarten, David Zelon
Screenwriter: Chris Hauty
Music: Michael Wandmacher
Editors: Victor Du Bois, Debra Weinfeld
Genre: Action/ Drama
Cinematography: Lukas Ettlin
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Location: Florida, USA
Running Time: 113 min.
Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: For viewers 14 and above
Jake Tyler (Sean Faris) is a tough and troubled teenager from Iowa . He belongs to a famous football high school team but resentfully has to give it up when his family relocates to Orlando for his younger brother’s tennis scholarship. All the while, Jake's mother (Leslie Hope) desperately tries to hold the family together as they mourn the recent loss of her husband. At his new high school, Jake develops a crush on Baja but gets humiliated and beaten by her current boyfriend and mixed martial arts champion, Ryan. To get even, Jake goes with his new friend, Max, to a local mixed martial arts guru, Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou who apparently can teach him to perfect his fighting skills. And in the process he learns not only to fight better but to become a better man.
What Karate Kid is to Karate, Never Back Down is to Mixed Martial Arts but without the values, the straightforward storytelling and funny and memorable scenes. As much as it tries to convey values such as temperance and discipline, it fails miserably with a flimsy plot, clicheic dialogues and stiff acting. It tries to create dynamic and exciting fight scenes with fast paced editing but loses its effectiveness with shots that are too tight and a choreography that is too plain. The effort to build a valid plot is drowned out by useless subplots and overrated violence of the underground sport. At some point also, one begins to wonder why the adults or the authorities do not intervene while young boys are made to compete like Roman gladiators as onlookers egg them on for blood and violence.
The film teaches young people that all problems can be handled by punching the offender in the face, and concedes to onlookers taking advantage of the situation with the use of technology (i.e.: cellphone cameras and the internet). The movie has no respect for the sport and looks down on the young. It portrays mixed martial arts as some underground spectacle for the hot-tempered and ill-mannered with no rules nor boundaries. The young people are portrayed as irritable, unreasonable, and disrespectful with no qualms about using other’s pain or downfall as entertainment. The movie has very little redeeming value and not worth the time and money one will waste to watch it.
