The YouTube Generation's fight movie taps out.
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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 ***image1***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.
