Predictable to the core...

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2015)

I watched part two first, as I didn't have part one at the time, but I managed to stumble across it in the second hand DVD store where I get my movie fix. And now having seen part one, I must say that I am not amused. Part one and two were essentially one and the same movie; an underdog trains for a bit more than a month and progresses to win martial arts competitions against those who have trained their whole lives. Yeah, very plausible.
A young college kid named Jake moves to a new location after he was thrown off of the football team for fighting. Here he meets a beautiful girl who turns out to be the girlfriend of the local beatdown champion (what are the odds?). And this spurs an inevitable fight. But with no chance of winning, Jake seeks training at a local gym.
The entire movie was one big cliché, and it was so predictable that you have the entire story figured out from the very start.
If you have seen part one, then you have essentially also already seen part two, and vice versa. At least there is hope for improvement in the upcoming third movie, as they got Thai action stars Tony Jaa and JeeJa Yanin on the cast list.
"Never Back Down" is not the brightest moment in the cinema history, but it is entertaining enough for what it is; a mediocre and predictable action movie.