Never Back Down (2008)

Have you ever watched a movie and thought, who the hell thought of this? Yeah? Me too. This is one of those movies. While I do enjoy martial arts movies, this movie just irritated me. If you are looking for a cliche of every single fight movie out there, here you have it.

To the point. This movie is about Jake Tyler (played by Sean Faris), who is a high school troublemaker. He ends up moving to Orlando, Florida because his younger brother gets a scholarship to attend a prestigious tennis academy there. A new school means new problems, but Jake discovers that there is an underground fight club (YES he is in high school… that’s like the Mickey Mouse Club having an underground fight club) that he decides to become a part of. After losing his first fight, he seeks out to get trained and become not only a better fighter but overall a better individual.

So………this is basically Fight Club and Karate Kid all in one movie. I know these movies are building blocks for some of the modern-day martial art films, but I really felt this movie failed to portray any kind of creativity- feel free to disagree. The story was just rewritten to add a little flair. I did, however, enjoy that Djimon Hounsou was in the film and played Jake's mentor. I like him as both an actor and an individual which is, honestly, one of the reasons I gave this movie a go. Oh, and Evan Peters is in this film which was so bonkers. He wasn't even a household name yet, so to see fresh-faced Evan getting his ass-kicked was kind of upsetting, then again, if I would have watched this movie back in 2008 when I had no idea who Evan was, I wouldn't have even of flinched.

When I went to IMDB and saw how many people rated this movie 7 stars and up, my mind was blown. Who the hell is writing those reviews? Are they getting paid? Shit, I might be doing something wrong then! But, once I saw that Rotten Tomatoes gave this film a 22% I felt a little better about my decision!

I don’t recommend this movie to ANYONE. I, personally, did not enjoy this movie. I have asked around and plenty of people seemed to enjoy it. If you are into Martial Arts films, go for it! Let me know if you enjoyed this movie and why. I might have to give it another go.

4 high school troublemakers out of 10

Laterz