"Being a man doesn't come Easy" -Never Back Down Movie Review

"Being a man doesn't come Easy" -Never Back Down

(No Spoilers- Trailer and Xtra-Clips at the bottom:  Never Back Down Training WEpisode and Amber Heard interview)

Never Back Down is about a high school male Sean Faris (Reunion, Smallville) named Jake Tyler who has personal problems: his father, while drunk, drove into a tree and killed himself. Jake was in the car and survived. Jake knew his dad was drunk, but didn't make any attempt to stop him before he drove. (This all happens before the movie begins.)

Jake is conflicted because not only does he blame himself, but his mother (Leslie Hope, quite good) seems to hold it against him too. And as time passes he becomes a problem teen, whose problems his mother dramatically recites as a growing pattern of statistics.

The family, Jake, his mother and a younger brother (Wyatt Smith, cute) move from Ohio to Florida so that the younger brother can study tennis.



Jake discovers that at the new high school there is an under-ground fight club. The catch is that the top fighters don't just box. If they did, Jake might have had a chance. "Boxing is old school, as dead as Louis and Marciano."




The movie revolves around two major themes: Everybody has their own fight, and never back down. How do you do this? According to the movie by facing your demons and overcoming bullies.

The movie has been compared to Karate Kid and Fight Club. It is not anything like the twisted plotline of Fight Club (the movie is in a class all it's own), but there is a fight club and one of the actors Ryan (Cam Gigandet) does look and act a bit like the ripped Brad Pitt from that movie.

It is much more mature and violent than Karate kid, but it does have a mentor teaching a guy discipline. The actor Djimon Hounsou ( read more about this actor here) plays Brazilian from Senegal who teaches conditioning, restraint, doggedness, and winning the mental game. I thought he was great.

The dialogue is flip and hip, the fight scenes are well `clipped'. I have been told that they don't exhibit the best fighting- but how they are filmed I thought, made them intense. See the training the actors went through in video at bottom of post.)

Amber Heard on top of Sean Faris

There is a romance sub plot , and a `what you do for your friends' angle. There is the `now-ness' of instant communication via youtube like videos. And though the movie is predictable in it's outcome - what makes it fresh is how the character of Jake really comes to understand his need for controlling his temper and anger, even if sometimes, the only thing a bully understands is a beat-down.



You Can Watch The Entire Movie On-Line right now
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Never Back Down Training Webisode


Amber Heard interview