Ludicrous rehashing of genre clichés.

Rating: 4/10 (11 August 2008)

Ever seen Fight Club, Snatch or The Karate Kid? So has Jeff Wadlow.
The glorious strands of one-dimensionality, based off of slavish devotion to those three films, course through Never Back Down, a plodding, braindead rich-kid hybrid of the three that, had it not occasionally gotten so amusingly boffo ludicrous, would have been damn near unbearable to sit through.
We have a myriad of types on display for you to enjoy, including Our Hero, Jake Tyler (Sean Faris), a pugnacious prodigy who is, of course, damaged goods. His father died in a car accident when he drunkenly wrapped his junker around a pole with Jake in the car. Jake was like 16 and probably should have driven that day, something that haunts Jake unceasingly, and something with which the folks on the football gridiron use as ammunition while Tyler is omnisciently slaughtering them (the film gives us several minutes of football footage, and not a single person other than Jake makes a tackle, despite being one of eleven guys and the plays concluding all about the field). He ends up roughing up a dude on the field, which, thanks to YouTube, follows him to his new school in Florida, where he DOESN'T WANNA FIGHT ANY MORE! But he is induced to by our second type, Cockyrival McDouchebag, aka our very own Cobra Kai, Ryan McCarthy (the ridiculously-named Cam Gigandet) He's a impossibly proficient mixed martial artist, and he goads Our Hero into fighting him at a party after kissing his girlfriend, the preposterously-named Baja (Amber Heard), aka Love Interest, whom Our Hero has struck up an acquaintance with (in an amusingly artificial classroom scene where he expounds on the anti-war intricacies of The Iliad), and is a bit smitten.
Also in this class, he meets our Annoying Sidekick, Max (Evan Peters), who saw him on YouTube and invites him to train with this film's Miyagi, the mythical Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou, looking like he really wanted the paycheck). Roqua warns him that his class is not to be used for fighting in the real world. Our Hero agrees, and thus begins this movie's peculiar sense of morals, most succinctly personified by a pivotal late scene. Let me set the table here: Cocky McDouchebag, to get Our Hero to fight at a secret underground Totally-Not-Fight-Club fight club, assaults Annoying Sidekick, putting him in the hospital. Our Hero informs Love Interest that he's going to the fight club and fighting him. Love Interest, rightfully, intones that this is exactly what Douchey wanted him to do, to desire revenge. Our Hero screams that what he's doing "isn't about revenge!", then proceeds on a course of action that can directly, 100% ONLY be defined as "revenge" (by doing exactly what Cocky wanted him to). The film seems to believe that "to exact punishment and take vengeance, retaliation to avenge for injuries or wrongs" somehow does not equal "revenge", and by this point, both his mother (who was vehemently opposed to him even training in a gym not three scenes prior) and Djimon Miyagi (who has his own retarded backstory for not fighting) are totally down with doing exactly what he had planned to do the entire movie, except now because the script told them it wasn't revenge, I guess it's okay.
The film is far more tolerable than a lot of the crap this year, mostly because it's so gosh darn silly, and my recommendation would be to rent this with a large group of your most boisterous friends, revel in the bone-crunching action, and mock the rest of it. I promise, you'll have a great time.
{Grade: 4/10 (C-) / #41 (of 62) of 2008}