Never Back Down (2008) Reviews

• Much better than advertised

  zachary-pruckowski2008-03-14

  The advertisements for this movie do it serious injustice. I was standing in the lobby of a movie theater at a free showing, and almost didn't walk in, because the trailers and ads had me convinced it was a complete waste of time. The advertisements portray the film as being merely a vehicle for shirtless boys to beat on each other and hot girls to wear bikinis. While there is no shortage of either, the movie has a strong underlying theme and a decent plot. At the thematic level, the movie is about accepting responsibility for your actions, controlling your emotions, and making good choices. It's as much about motivations as macho. Yes, it is a teen-targeted movie. You've got rich kids running around in massive mansions driving expensive cars, but that's just the setting. You've got people beating the crap out of each other, but that's just a plot device. The heart of the movie is about personal growth and making choices. It's not an empty action flick or a taped brawl. It's not the best film of the year, and it may well wind up as a late night cable movie in a few months, but it's nowhere near as bad as people expect. It's definitely worth the price of a rental, and worth the $10 to see it in theaters, if you've got no other plans. I blame the negativity largely on the advertising, which tries to sell it as "just another fight movie".

  More

• Although this has been done 1,000 times

  Dragoneyed3632008-08-05

  . . . Never Back Down was still a really great movie that I had a lot of fun watching, and I was surprised with how much I actually ended up liking it. Of course this film is really very predictable and was basically just a rip-off version of Fight Club, The Karate Kid, and movies like that in general that was basically aimed at 16, 17, and 18 year old boys, but it was really enjoyable if you just judge it based on an actual movie and not what audience it's trying to pull in. It did get pretty annoying and downright unbelievable at times, but I have to give this movie it's props, because the acting was done very professionally for a bunch of model-body teenage actors, and it also managed to keep me so interested and entertained through the entire film with semi adroit and crafty, motivating scenes and material matter. It gets a bit mediocre, as I have said, and some stuff just falls flat, but they handle everything they lack so well with other interesting and appealing scenes and substance, excluding the featherweight dialogue, haha. Overall, I was so happy with the outcome of this movie, because while being cliché, and certainly not worthy of winning an Oscar or anything like that, it was really enjoyable, and I had a great time watching it. If you lower your expectations and free your mind, I bet you will too. I suggest you see it if you can appreciate it for what it is. If anything else, there is Cam Gigandet and Sean Faris shirtless.

  More

• Entertaining, as long as you don't think too hard.

  FourNineFoxtrot2008-08-08

  Yes, it's just a revamped Karate Kid. But with MMA, not just Karate, although I did have the occasional urge to shout "Cobra Kai!" when the bad guy came on screen. Some cool action, basically just MMA (like in the UFC) that's been "hollywoodized" to be showy, "underground", and performed by supposed teenagers. Djimon Hounsou is wasted on this film, but does fairly well at being the token real actor, giving it some tenuous legitimacy. On the upside, probably a more believable martial arts instructor than Pat Morita... physically, at least. It's a great movie to just turn off your brain to, and watch lots of girls in bikinis and guys beating each other up. Pleasant, mindless T&A/Action.

  More

• Serious Case of Deja View

  dukevega2008-03-14

  If you weren't old enough to see movies and understand them back in 1984, this may seem like a pretty good movie. If, on the other hand, you were old enough, then you will see this movie for what it is: an updated version of "Karate Kid", a much better film. Before seeing this, I looked up the movie and read the plot, and that was the first thought that ran through my head; seeing it only proved it. By the time the movie was over, I counted over 15 similarities between the two films, and yet nowhere did I see any credit given to the original writers. Shouldn't they be suing for plagiarism? 1 Poor kid is star 2 Moves out to a coastal city 3 Meets pretty girl 4 Pretty girl has jerk boyfriend 5 Jerk boyfriend is local fighting champ (2 years running no less) 6 Poor kid knows a little about fighting 7 Gets into fight with jerk boyfriend and gets beat 8 Meets up with a teacher in the same style as jerk boyfriend 9 Teacher is foreign born 10 Teacher has experienced great personal loss 11 Poor kid and girl have tiff 12 They get back together after he apologizes for being a jerk 13 While jerk boyfriend is good fighter, has bad focus 14 Poor kid and jerk boyfriend face off in tournament he is champion of 15 In the tournament, poor kid suffers a serious injury 16 Poor kid wins anyway and earns jerk boyfriend's respect There are some other plot holes which stretch the credibility of this movie even further. The main villain is in good shape, as he walks around half the movie with no shirt on, revealing some well-defined abs. I find it awfully hard to believe that a high school kid could achieve something like that. The other plot hole which also made me scratch my head was the death of the lead character's father. He got drunk at a bar, got behind the wheel and wrapped his car around the tree. The lead was with him and I was wondering, "What is a high school kid doing at a bar? Do they check IDs any more?" And another thing: what are high school kids doing participating in full-contact fighting tournaments? Isn't there some kind of law against that? The one good thing I did like about the movie was the villain. He had a whole smug attitude which came off as highly believable. But still, that isn't nearly enough to make up for this rip-off. I'm just glad this was a sneak preview so I didn't have to pay to see this.

  More

• Every film cliché ever jammed into 100 minutes

  cabdriver_casual2008-04-12

  I liked this film better when it was called the Karate Kid. Sure, there is nothing new under the sun and every film borrows something from other films that have come before it, but this is bordering on copyright infringement. If I had to write a Karate Kid summary in 3 sentences, this is what I would write: Kid moves to a new town. Kid gets the living crap beaten out of him by the town bad boy. Kid starts some heavy duty Karate training so he can get revenge by kicking the bad boys ass while simultaneously winning the heart of the hottest girl in town. Now, if I had to write a summary for this film in 3 sentences it would be as follows: Kid moves to a new town. Kid gets the living crap beaten out of him by the town bad boy. Kid starts some heavy duty Mixed Martial Arts training so he can get revenge by kicking the bad boys ass while simultaneously winning the heart of the hottest girl in town. The plot is literally exactly the same. The only difference is that when it came to the soundtrack they replaced Peter Cetera with nu metal in the vein of Linkin Park and the most pivotal characters in this film were cell phones. People have commented that the fight scenes were pretty good. I tend to disagree. They were pretty weak. Instead of watching this film just watch the Karate Kid and have a computer handy. When the fight scenes are on in the Karate Kid, just turn away and watch some UFC fights on youtube. You'll have practically the same film as Never Back Down, just much much better. I was surprised at the lack of tits in this film. Usually a film with a script of this caliber has a heap of tits. This was obviously an oversight from the producers and I'm sure that will be fixed if they make a sequel. I do respect the fact that they were able to jam every 80's film cliché ever into the little over 90 minutes. When writing a film review on this site you have the option of checking the "contains spoilers" box. This feature could easily be disabled for Never Back Down. It is impossible to spoil the content of this film as everybody has already seen it, at least 1000 times, just with a different title. Will the good kid defeat the bad kid in a no holes barred fight? Who knows? Well actually everybody.

  More