Never Back Down...

Okay, so people who know me, know that I am a pretty big MMA/wrestling fan. I know that may seem really lame, but, it's something I grew up watching, and I am entertained by it. However, I was morbidly UN-excited about Never Back Down. I had zero expectations about this film...was it a bit TO much...

In my opinion, definitley. This movie is a story from director Jeff Wadlow, best known for the horror-piece of shit Cry_Wolf. It is about a kid, Jake Tyler (Sean Farris), and his mother and brother moving to a new city. His father died in a drunk driving accident in which he was in the passenger seat. He decided not to fight with his father when he wanted to drive, so it's something he feels is his fault, and this is about him coming to terms with that. When the get there, he meets a beautiful young girl named Baha Miller (Amber Heard), who is dating MMA champ Ryan (Cam Gigandet). When he gets invited to a party, Ryan picks a fight with him. This was brought on by a previous altercation that hit the internet and caused Jake to move from his previous school. He finds out there is like an underground fight club, and, to end Ryans mean streak, he decides to fight. He trains with Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), and then he begins to become confident. That's all I am going to say, because I know this will hit huge with every teen out there. But, hopefully this will deter a few of you from seeing this huge p.o.s.

What was good? The fight scenes where shot cool. Having seen a lot of this on t.v. and stuff, I knew some things about it, and it was cool to see it shot in a fun way. Thats all I can say about positives, so lets have some fun now.

No one gives a good performance. Everyone, even Hounsou is really just phoning it in. It's your basic story of a kid from a broken home picking fights and becoming a better person when faced with a tough test. And the highschool parts are extremely basic. Boy falls in love with bullies girl, girl gets dumped, falls for the boy. It's the Step Up of fight flicks. Step Up + Street Fighter=Shitty fucking movie called Never Back Down. There were some really really laughable parts...like a jaguar growl everytime Ryan would turn around in a fight. It tried to be current with the high end hand held camera work and the sped up montages. Hell, they even have a training montage. They even ruined a great TV On The Radio song. The last thing, with all of this publicity about violence in our movies, how did the studio grant a green light to a pretty violent flick, about a highschool and it's underground fight club. Oh, and it's written from the guy who wrote Homeward Bound 2: Lost In San Francisco...what a great pedigree. I really don't even want to talk about it....Just go see Fight Club, it's a quadrillion times better. Hell, go see Mortal Kombat.Go see something good...please...