Never Back Down
New Karate Kid in Town Learns to ’Never Back Down’
Never Back Down
Rated PG-13 for mature themes, intense violence, profanity, teen
partying and premarital sexuality.
Running time: 112 minutes
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Film Review by Kam
Williams
Excellent (3.5 stars)
After her husband dies in a car accident while driving under the
influence, Margot Tyler (Leslie Hope) decides to relocate from Iowa to
Orlando, Florida for a fresh start with her two teenage sons. Plus,
there’s the added incentive of enrolling her younger one, Charlie (Wyatt
Smith), in a tennis camp catering to promising prodigies.
Unfortunately, the grieving widow failed to factor in the toll the move
might take on her elder boy, Jake (Sean Faris), a sensitive soul who has
been beset by unaddressed anger management issues ever since the
tragedy. Jake is easily upset about the subject because he was sitting
in the passenger seat that fateful night. So, he’s hard on himself,
always agonizing over why he hadn’t intervened. Consequently, all it
takes is for some mean kid to say, ’you're dead dad was a drunk,’ for
him to fly into a rage the same way the Three Stooges were triggered by
the words ’Niagara Falls’ in their classic comedy skit.
You would expect, then, that with a change of scenery he’d be able to
leave all the teasing and his painful memories behind. However, in this
age of the internet, a person’s past is just a Google search away. So,
it isn't long before Jake’s story reaches the ears of Ryan McCarthy (Cam
Gigandet), the ringleader of a sadistic gang of ne’er-do-wells at his
new school who like to fight for fighting’s sake.
Next, Ryan’s girlfriend, Baja (Amber Heard), feigns a romantic
interest in Jake, seductively inviting him to a party, never letting on
that he’s coming over just to take a bloody beat down. Soon after he
arrives, Ryan callously plays the ’Your dead dad was a drunk’ card, and
Jake predictably pops his cork, unaware that his opponent has a black
belt in brawling.
A rescue squad arrives in the person of 98-pound weakling Max Cooperman
(Evan Peters). He who peels Jake off the floor and directs him to the
Combat Club, a mixed martial arts dojo run out of a rundown warehouse by
Jean Roqua (Djimon
Hounsou), a spiritually-oriented sensei from Senegal. Like a
latter-day Mr. Miyagi allows the lad to enroll with the understanding,
’No fighting outside of the gym, no matter what’ because ’people who
come here for the wrong reasons never last.’
What disciplinarian Mr. Roqua doesn't know is that Jake’s ulterior
motive is to even the score with Ryan in an upcoming street fighting
tournament. He simultaneously plans to steal the heart of Baja who
suddenly has second thoughts about allowing herself to be manipulated by
her bully of a boyfriend.
While Never Back Down offers few surprises, at least plot-wise, for
anyone already familiar with The Karate Kid (austere training regimen),
Fight Club (wanton nihilism), Kung Fu (’Grasshopper’), Rocky (drinking
raw eggs) and the rest of the mano-a-mano genre, it does add several
21st Century elements to the mix (like the use of YouTube) which serve
to make the familiar formula feel refreshed.
The film is grounded by another powerful performance by two-time
Oscar-nominee Djimon Hounsou (In America and
Blood Diamond) who again manages to elevate what might have
otherwise merely been a mediocre movie by imbuing his every scene with
that trademark gravitas. And the rest of the cast members are talented,
too, though they tend to be at their best during the highly-stylized,
state-of-the-art fight sequences.
The Karate Kid joins the Fight Club and kicks butt!
Related Links
Djimon Hounsou: The Never Back Down Interview
http://aalbc.com/reviews/djimon_hounsou1.htm
Djimon Hounsou The Blood Diamond Interview with Kam Williams
http://aalbc.com/reviews/djimon_hounsou.htm
Blood Diamond Film Review
http://aalbc.com/reviews/blood_diamond.htm