A reprehensible piece of fetid, noxious sludge

Rating: 1/10 (9 June 2014)

Putrid, awful, ugly, exasperating, moronic, insufferably boring, terribly written, terribly acted, morally reprehensible and completely rotten to the core, Never Back Down might just be one of the worst films ever made. It is one of those films that is all about trite clichés, and such films can often be made very well, but Never Back Down is so lazily made that you can almost hear director Jeff Wadlow yawning in the background. The film's message is old and familiar: if you're a boring nobody who is constantly bullied by tough guys at school, don't ever tell about those problems to anyone, because you can start studying martial arts instead and beat up the tough guys, after which everyone respects you and even get to date a hot chick! Yuck. The acting is laughably bad across the board, with Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet delivering the most charmless and bland performances you'll ever see. Amber Heard is very pretty (which is the only positive thing you can say about the film), but she's awful as well, and even Djimon Hounsou, the only qualified actor here, is completely wasted in a clownish role. I don't think even the most die-hard fans of mixed martial arts get anything out of this piece of crap other than a bad temper. Never Back Down is a film that I not only utterly loathe, it's a film that I disdain.