A Fight Club set among the high-school set, Never Back Down purports to blow the lid off the underground world of Mixed Martial Arts (aka MMA), a combination of wrestling, karate, judo, sambo, and other Eastern combat disciplines. Those with a taste for watching buff boys competing like Roman gladiators before bloodthirsty crowds may be drawn to this, while viewers who prefer entertainment with a semblance of intelligence, taste, and believability should look elsewhere. For the record, the plot of Jeff Wadlow's Never Back Down finds troubled teen Jake (Sean Faris) earning a tough-guy rep after savagely beating a fellow student who calls Jake's late father a drunk. Jake relocates to a school in Orlando where his classmates have seen the fight on YouTube and are anxious to initiate him in MMA. Class bully Ryan (Cam Gigandet) goads Jake into a fight, using the sexy Baja (Amber Heard) as bait, and after Jake gets his clock cleaned, he decides to train with a martial-arts master (Oscar-nominee Djimon Hounsou) who also dispenses life lessons. It's all nonsense—stripped of logic and deficient in characterization—that exists only as a vehicle for the bone-crunching, flesh-ripping fight scenes, which are admittedly staged with a certain amount of panache, though not enough to justify watching what is otherwise a piece of rancid tripe. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include both the theatrical and extended “Beat Down” editions of the film, audio commentary (by director Jeff Wadlow, star Sean Faris, and writer Chris Hauty), the hour-plus documentary “Blow By Blow: Breaking Down the Fights,” 14 minutes of deleted scenes with introductions by Wadlow, the “Mix It Up: Bringing MMA to the Big Screen” (10 min.) and “Star Power: Djimon Hounsou in Training” (3 min.) behind-the-scenes featurettes, a two-minute promo reel, a “Training the Cast” segment (2 min.), a brief “The Thrill of the Fight: Choreographing MMA” featurette, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a disappointing film.] (E. Hulse)
Never Back Down
Summit, 113 min., PG-13, DVD: $26.99, July 29 Volume 23, Issue 3
Never Back Down
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