Never Back Down
Wednesday, 02 Apr 2008 15:59
Sean Faris, Amber Heard and Cam Gigandet star in Never Back Down
Directed by Jeff Wadlow, out April 4th in cinemas, starring Sean Faris, Cam Gigandet, Amber Heard, Djimon Hounsou, running time 108mins.
In a nutshell…
The Karate Kid, MMA-style
What's it all about?
When angry football star Jake Tyler (Faris) is forced to leave his Iowa homeland after younger brother Charlie wins a tennis scholarship, he has the chance to make a fresh start in Orlando, only for the attention of the tempting Baja Miller (Heard) and the demons of his past to catch up with him. No sooner has Jake come off worse in a fight with big man on campus Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet) - Baja's boyfriend - than he's enrolled in a mixed martial arts (MMA) training program with the intense Jean Roqua (Hounsou) and channeling his rage into being the best fighter in town. But when Baja leaves Ryan for Jake, a final clash between the pair is only so far away.
To watch the trailer here on inthenews.co.uk, click here
Who's in it?
Having played bit parts in Smallville, One Tree Hill and Pearl Harbour, Sean Faris moves to the big leagues with the leading role in Never Back Down, while eye-candy of the moment Amber Heard follows her turn in recent fright flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane with a love interest role here. Upcoming parts in The Pineapple Express and The Informers promise bigger things for Heard, but the less acting roles Cam Gigandet wins, the better, with his continual s**t-eating grin honed to perfection since his maddening work as bad-boy Volchok in The OC. What Oscar-nominee Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, Amistad, Gladiator) is doing here is an utter mystery.
As an example…
"You don't wanna fight… then what the hell are you doing here?" - Ryan
"Your son is a good fighter." - Jean
"Something every mother longs to hear." - Margot Tyler
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars?
When hell freezes over. While the fight scenes are certainly shot with an impressive kinetic relish, this is a movie made for Friday night audiences and with the cast selected on the basis of how good they look with their shirts off/in a bikini, rather than acting ability, this is certainly not a headscratcher of a film.
What the others say
"I laughed so much at the litany of cliches that I finally had to admit I was entertained from start to finish by this cheesy knock-off." - Richard Roeper, Ebert and Roeper
"The eternal battle between the hot-but-arrogant blond and the hot-and-likable brunet continues on new turf in the almost gleefully-bad Never Back Down." - Hank Sartin, Time Out New York
So is it any good?
Not especially. Early scenes reach for the grainy feel of Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights, but as soon as the fights kick off and Jake becomes the laughing stock of his new classmates for - shock horror - knowing the answer to a question, the movie's demographic is clear. This is film tailor-made for the audiences who lapped up umpteen sequels to The Fast and the Furious and whose patronage has led to a third Step Up movie getting the green light. Faris is perfectly adequate but it's hard to get past the fact that he bears a striking resemblance to Cristiano Ronaldo and Gigandet is even more slappable than in The OC. Slo-mo shots of just-punched faces come thick and fast, gay and geek characters are drawn so thinly as to be laughable and when yet another training montage sequence begins, it's hard to forget the "we need a montage… " scene from Team America: World Police. It's also a little worrying that the film seems to cater to the happy slapping generation, with fight footage passed rapidly around the Florida community and scant regard paid to any notion that violence might be, oh I don't know, a bad thing. That said, Wadlow's music video-esque direction does at least build a creditable amount of tension and despite all your best intentions, you might find yourself cheering Jake on in the final fight. I
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but, as martial arts movies go, just watch The Karate Kid.
5/10
Lewis Bazley
"Cam Gigandet - you are so fine. You look so good." - Gracie Cantu
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