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Last Updated: April 23, 2008 - 10:02 AM
The YouTube Generation’s fight movie taps out.
Dude, this movie is going to kick ass! |
The fight movie is in trouble. Its prime was Rocky: quick on its thematic toes, bracing and packing a punch. With The Karate Kid, the fight movie still had some moves, but got a little soft. Then along came Jean-Claude Van Damme, who not only starred in his movies, but occasionally wrote them. It seemed as if the fight movie was down for the count. But no! Sure, it has been hit in the head a lot and it staggers around toothless, bloody and brain damaged, but that doesn’t stop the genre from getting up and muttering something incoherent while blindly pawing the air.
The blind pawing comes in the guise of Never Back Down. Though its incoherent muttering (script) is credited to Chris Hauty, whose only other film writing was for Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, the majority of the credit must be given to The Karate Kid writer Robert Mark Kamen.
Never Back Down’s plot is essentially identical to that of the ’80s classic, except instead of using the “flying crane,”—a move my grandma could counter—its fight scenes are made up of the highly effective combination of fighting techniques—known as mixed martial arts (MMA)—popularized by the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Just like The Karate Kid, Never Back Down is about a high schooler, Jake (Sean Faris), who moves from a small town to a big, wealthy city. Jake develops a crush on the local bully’s girlfriend, gets his ass kicked by said bully, gets the girl after she realizes that her boyfriend is a complete asshole, acquires a surrogate father/martial arts trainer who puts him through many a montage and, finally, marches toward an inevitable revenge ass kicking that culminates in his being respected by his peers. The
NEVER BACK DOWN
Directed by
Jeff Wadlow
Written by
Chris Hauty
With Sean Faris, Amber Heard, Cam Gigandet, Evan Peters, Leslie Hope, Djimon Hounsou and Wyatt Smith
Regal Stadium 14
110 min.
PG-13 |
only suspense is whether he’ll knock the bully out or finish him with an arm bar. Modern touches include the instantaneous transmission of fights to the entire high school via cell phone cameras.
Faris’ Jake is a 26-year-old Tom Cruise look-alike and a graduate of the Barbizon School of Modeling. In fact, the entire high school looks to be comprised of unemployed models nearing 30. Oscar-nominated Djimon Hounsou, sadly, plays Mr. Miyagi to Faris’ Daniel-san. And Amber Heard stars as the prized babe who portrays her emotions through a nuanced repertoire of lusty lip bites. And Heard has to chew those soft lips ever so frequently for, as one learns from Never Back Down, nothing makes chicks hornier than men beating each other until they are semi-conscious.
One wants to yell, “Stay down fight movie! Stay down!” But the genre, even if it’s got little in the way of brains, has got heart. Lord knows, it’ll be back to fight another day.
© Copyright 2000-2008 by the Santa Fe Reporter
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