Never Back Down (2008)

Never Back Down is the mantra Jake Tyler (Sean Faris) has lived his life by. An Orlando transplant from quiet, rural Iowa, Jake is having a tough time coming to terms with recently losing his dad and adjusting to living among the wealthier students of his new high school. Back home he had friends and the popularity that comes from being a football star. Now he’s an outsider who’s quick-tempered past is coming back to haunt him just as he’s starting to make an impression on hottie Baja (Amber Heard).

A fateful party invite brings light to an insidious underground organization of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fights. An incident captured on video at one of Jake’s football games and posted on YouTube puts him smack dab in the middle of something he can’t handle. He is soundly handed his rear-end by the school’s tough guy Ryan McCarthy (Can Gigandet). Withdrawing even further into himself, Jake finds a friend in Max (Evan Peters). Max introduces Jake to his coach Jen Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), a famous MMA fighter with his own dark past. Jake enters into an intensive training program under the watchful eye of his new mentor, who in turn hopes to teach his new student more about life and what’s worth fighting for.

I wish I could say the prognosis for Never Back Down is good, but it’s not. I went in with the level of expectations you’d have for a film of this nature. For the most part it met those (decidedly low) expectations but there was still something lacking. There is some deceptively deep sub-text going on in the story, a lot of father and son issues that I feel should have been brought to the forefront a little to give the characters a little more depth. The writer Chris Hauty throws in an intelligent reference to Homer and the Iliad but the focus is more on physical challenges than intellectual. Even the romance through-line is too slim to be more than just a superficial bone to throw to the poor girlfriends that got dragged along by their boyfriends wanting to see fight action.

The plot is typical: new guy with a chip on his shoulder looking to prove something to himself. Sean Faris, who may be unfamiliar to movie goers having done mostly TV work, is fine as the affable Jake. The writer gives him some meaty bits in dealing with some interesting family issues but the guy’s 25 playing an 18 year old. You lose a little of the innocence and confusion of a truly younger person thrust into something they have no clue about. And he’s going to start getting this a lot: his resemblance to Tom Cruise (albeit a lot taller) is remarkable.

Djimon Hounsou is always a physical force on screen. You look at this guy and have no difficulty believing he’s a tried and tested MMA fighter. Like Jake they write Jean some weighty backstory to play with. It gives a cookie cutter character some dimension and more than likely was the hook to get Hounsou to do this kind of movie.

Like the use of instant messaging and texts in Cry_Wolf (Yes, I actually saw Cry_Wolf), Wadlow once again revels in the exploitation of new media. Fights are recorded on cell phones and mini-cams for immediate consumption. Some scenes, shot with edgy camera tricks, quick edits and mood enhancing future chart-topping hits flow like one music video into another. Clearly this is a director with his finger on the pulse of what young America likes. However, all the glamour and up to date technology doesn’t help an uninteresting movie.

View the trailer:

IMAGE GALLERY