At first, I found it difficult to think of Never Back Down in any terms other than ones set in all-caps and ending with exclamation marks. "AWESOME!" and "HELL YEAH!" made up the bulk of the audience's commentary during the screening, perhaps owing to the fact that the bulk of them were - like my friend and myself- young and male.
On that note, the film succeeds admirably with its target, and really only demographic. Fast (and sleek) enough for even the most distracted of channel flippers, this is a product perfectly suited for the infestation of today's Internet banner ads; everything you need to know about it you can learn from its MySpace and television commercials.
Jake Tyler (played by the chiseled Sean Faris) is an Iowa teen transplanted to Orlando, Fla., forced away from his high school football team and friends, but not from the memory of a drunken father who killed himself in a car accident. His flannel shirts immediately mark him as the New Guy, the second most sacred of genre archetypes. But the rampant spread of a YouTube clip featuring him in an all-out football brawl back in Iowa marks him as the New Guy With Issues, the foremost sacred of genre archetypes.
Everything evil people hate about America is included in the Florida setting, with emphasis on iPhones, Bowflex machines, Starbucks, and blonde girls in bikinis. Jake soon meets Hot Girl (played by the very tan and very blonde Amber Heard), who uses an iPhone and Bowflex, drinks Starbucks, and wears a bikini. Hot Girl tells New Guy With Issues (from here on in HG and NGWI, respectively) to come to a party. When Jake arrives at the party, the dark and gritty underbelly of a supposedly idyllic rich Florida community is exposed to him: half-naked dudes pummeling each other at beach parties.
Apparently, Jake is not alone in his violence-prone behavior; he is confronted with an entire culture of mixed martial arts fighting, ripped from the pages of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and plopped into white, rich, and tan America. (Think Fight Club, minus anything resembling intelligence or originality, meets The OC, minus the decent music selection.)
Ryan McCarthy (The OC's Cam Gigandet), the self-described top gun in town, plays on Jake's haunted memories (he makes fun of Jake's dad) and taunts him into a fight. In the middle of a sizable crowd, Ryan lays a sound beat-down on the ill-prepared Jake, whose conventional boxing moves are no match for Ryan's sweet abs - sorry, jabs. With a repertoire of moves that emasculates opponents - and thrills the ladies - Ryan thrives on the crowd appeal of spectator violence.
Director Jeff Wadlow knows that we, too, thrive on the violent intensity, and the film's fights are arranged with appreciable athleticism and exaggeration. As the entire film is more or less a 90210 take on the UFC, they are thus the film's principle asset.
Much, much better films have traversed the story's familiar terrain before, The Karate Kid being an obvious example. Still, I found myself enjoying the cliches almost because of their predictability, and the moments of adrenaline - and there are many of them - compensate for other moments of mediocrity. Leads Faris and Gigandet have a suitable dynamic, but Djimon Hounsou as Jake's guiding light (and combat trainer) appropriately dominates every scene. Really, more than any other part of the movie, Hounsou deserves the term "AWESOME!" Otherwise, Never Back Down isn't much more than a B.
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