Never Back Down Review

Having just bought the DVD I have recently re-discovered the awesomeness that is 'Never Back Down'. Unfortunately it seems the majority of reviewers fail to share my enthusiasm of the film (at the time of writing Rotten Tomatoes has it at around 20%) and so I felt I needed to give it some love right here.

There's one way I can get you to see why the film is pure class. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So here goes:

Serious, how can you not love a film with that in it??

Amber Heard aside however, the main problem most reviewers seem to have with the film is that it's uninspired in that it very closely follows the conventions of the fight film. That is to say it ticks all the boxes: wise guru, father issues, romantic sub-plot, revenge as the motivation, training montages and final showdown. In this sense they claim the film offers nothing new that we haven't seen before in Rocky or The Karate Kid.

My point however is: what's wrong with that? The genre is one that very rarely sees a new entry and as much as I love both Rocky and The Karate Kid I feel that an update is long overdue. For fans of those films Never Back Down offers everything you could hope for - a contempory take on a classic formula that plays down the cheese and plays up the stakes, the brains and the acting skills. This is a mixture of Fight Club and Step Up but structured in the familiar Karate Kid formula.

And to say it offers nothing new at all is also unfair. For starters this is the first time we've seen MMA in a mainstream film, something which was long overdue and which makes for spectacular, visceral fight scenes.


The film also offers a fairly in-depth meditation on the ethics of combat, using some clever imagery and literary references to make its point. Other reviewers have again missed the point here reading the film's message as 'sometimes it's better not to fight'. For this reason they complain that the fight at the end is contradictory and caters only to the studios with no thought for integrity. The title of the film alone however should be enough evidence that this is not the case. My understanding of the message is that sometimes you do have to do something - to fight - if only to prevent yourself from having to fight in the future and to protect the things you care about. Like the shield of Achiles.

The slightly deeper nature of the film is also reflected in the characters who aren't your usual two dimensional stereotypes. Each one has their own 'fight' in the film and each is likeable and charismatic in their role. Our protagonist Jake in particular is a very well fleshed out character, played with gusto by Sean Faris, and his problems are easy to identify or at least sympathise with making you route for him all that much more when he goes up against bad guy Ryan.

Throw in a rocking 'high school' style sound track, an awesome cast and some nifty directing and editing (both of which nicely compliment the contempory setting and technological themes) and you have the best film for getting pumped since Rocky 4.

*****