Never Back Down (2008)

Stylized mixed martial arts action from leading members of stunt team 87 Eleven (300, FIGHT CLUB) collides with bland, clichéd teen drama centered on mostly attractive, bored and spoiled white rich kids living the high life in Miami while either pretending to be tough street brawlers or idolizing those who do. It’s THE KARATE KID for the “me” generation and an insult to both real MMA competitive fighting and martial arts cinema, not unlike most low-budget MMA films that periodically turn up on video store shelves. The only difference here is that the filmmakers blow through a bigger-than-usual budget to ultimately reach the same unsatisfying results.

A banal script from Chris Hauty, who’s only other credit is as co-writer on Disney’s canine family-adventure film HOMEWARD BOUND II, shamelessly panders to the most trivial fantasies of its intended juvenile audience, which can largely be boiled down to the eternal quest for the acceptance and adulation of fickle adolescent peers.

Looking and behaving like a prefabricated and cloned merger of Tom Cruise and Ben Afflick, actor Sean Faris stars as Jake Tyler, a high schooler with teen idol looks and anger management issues, driven by guilt from inaction that previously led to the death of his father in a drunk-driving accident. After moving from the Midwest to Miami with his mother and little brother following a fight during a football game that got him expelled from school, Jake enters a new high school where he discovers an underground fight club run by local teens. He quickly develops a rivalry with the club’s top fighter, an egotistical and overconfident rich kid named Ryan (Cam Gigandet). He also develops an attraction to Ryan’s blonde-haired trophy girlfriend Baja (Amber Heard) whom we are supposed to believe is actually highly intelligent and introspective in spite of her material appearance, manner and choice of friends.

Everyone in the film looks like a soap opera star or cover model except for Jake’s new frizzy-haired friend Max (Evan Peters), who is yet another rich kid with a fancy car but at least appears on the surface to be more representative of a typically geeky, Xbox-loving, awkward youth with more wishful desire than genuine ability to be someone great. In this case, he wants to be a fighter too, enough so to be willing to get kicked around even though he doesn’t fit the testosterone-charged profile at all. In Robert Mark Kamen’s world, he would probably be the hero which would have been infinitely more interesting than what this film gives us.

As the story goes, Jake gets conned into a lop-sided fight with Ryan who uses his MMA skills to hand the untrained newcomer an embarrassing defeat at a house party. Max subsequently introduces Jake to Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), a former professional MMA fighter now coaching aspiring fighters at a local gym.

So begins the film’s master-student relationship that follows past genre convention to the letter. Jake proves he has the determination and heart to excel in his training but has a chip on his shoulder that proves to be an impediment. Jean becomes a mentor and father figure for the troubled teen, although it’s never made clear what Jake’s training goal is aside from being able to kick a heavy punching bag. Beyond that, Jack seems a natural who glides through his training, besting all of his more experienced peers at everything from tractor tire flipping to free sparring.

We eventually learn that both master and student have unresolved issues from their past that threaten their relationship as they struggle to rise to the challenges they present each other. It’s Mr. Miyagi and Daniel Larusso all over again but with forgettable training sequences, less character depth and worse acting.

Jake’s challenge is to master his anger and stop getting into fights because of it. Yet he fails to control himself initially and even when he finally does develop enough self control to say no to fighting, the film comes up with rationale for him to predictably challenge Ryan in a rematch. After his buddy Max gets a thrashing and Jake convinces himself and his mentor that Ryan needs a good reprisal beating, he enters an underground tournament known as the Beat Down.

We’re then treated to a series of fast-paced MMA fights, a teasing letdown as Ryan gets disqualified for an eye gouge and finally an impromptu match-up between Ryan and Jack outside in the parking lot.

Budgeted at $20 million, NEVER BACK DOWN is the most expensive MMA-themed movie produced yet. As such, it has more than enough production muscle to deliver a visibly serviceable fight film despite the limited experience of its director Jeff Wadlow. What is lacking, however, is substance, creativity and just about everything that would make MMA and martial arts movie fans happy. To understand where this movie is coming from it needs to be known that the production company, Summit Entertainment, is responsible for AMERICAN PIE (there is a reference to it in this movie), STEP UP, STEP UP 2: THE STREETS, and THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE. In this context, it’s as if the producers of PORKY’S or EPIC MOVIE decided to make a fight film. The chance of delivering any quality representation of MMA is almost non-existent in what is clearly a drive to exploit a popular trend with disposable, cookie cutter entertainment targeted at teenagers. The main casualty of this approach is the action.

The heart of the film should be the training Jake undergoes with Jean. After all, this is the activity that supposedly changes his life by allowing him to channel his anger. This could have also been a great opportunity to reveal the intense body conditioning and mental challenge that goes into training for MMA matches. The film glosses over much of this by relying too much on montages accompanied by cheesy power pop rock and not enough on philosophy, technique and creative and detailed presentation to draw the audience in. Say what you will about THE KARATE KID and its shortcomings but the training sequences with the “wax on, wax off” reference and fence painting have become iconic representations of character-building fight training that emphasize fundamentals. No one is going to remember the training in NEVER BACK DOWN and the same can be said of the competently choreographed, yet sterile fight sequences.

Most of the combat is a mediocre representation of good MMA that delivers some familiar moves yet ignores winning fundamentals like repeatedly pounding a floored opponent into submission with an elbow or fist. For whatever reason, the stunt team and/or director decided that every match in the tournament would end with a submission hold rather than a satisfying knockout, which they save for the final fight. The armbar maneuver is overused by Jake and there aren’t nearly enough solid chain strikes or examples of tight grappling.

Like most modern fight sequences pitting amateur screen fighters against one another, combat is chopped to hell and back in editing in an attempt to artificially speed up pacing and bolster the prowess of screen fighters. Anyone who watches UFC regularly should not be impressed by this technique which is commonly used in Hollywood as a permanent placeholder for quality fight work from stunt actors, the likes of which we still rarely see outside of Hong Kong.

Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet are both horribly miscast as teenage street fighters. They’re both far too dainty to be doing what they’re doing with the kind of physical power and conviction the action team has them trying to convey. It reminds me of some of the recent miscasting we see in Hong Kong action films with scrawny little guys with boyish faces like Nicholas Tse and Vanness Wu who have form but lack power, grace and/or substance to do serious action roles as police officers or professional fighters. Jet Li isn’t a big person in real life but his screen presence and fighting skills make him larger than life on camera. Ralph Macchio hardly looked like a karate master in THE KARATE KID but that was the point. The real success of that film was that he was playing an everyman underdog that ordinary kids could relate to, not a sculpted male model that all the ladies fawn over and the boys envy. Although in NEVER BACK DOWN we also get a token gay friend of Baja who does fall into the fawning camp.

There are points in NEVER BACK DOWN that border on self parody. The scenes involving what appears to be an entire school’s obsession with viral online videos of Jake’s fighting prowess are laughable, particularly as we see him walking through school in front of starstruck kids in every direction. One of these videos depicts an enraged Jake stepping out of a car to efficiently beat up three burly guys who emerge from a Humvee like he’s Jason Bourne all of a sudden. Actually, the fights in the BOURNE films are far messier and less predictable than this one. Yes, most of us have dreamed of doing something like that and action movies frequently divert from reality in far more obvious ways but seeing it happen in the context of a teen drama is silly to say the least. The suggestion is that a kid with a short temper and few weeks of MMA training can go around beating on anyone twice his size for even the smallest of offense without consequence. Sure, he gets kicked out of the gym he’s training at but only until his trainer hears a pity-me speech and then its back to business.

The whole movie offends me. The overall message is that you can do what ever you want without consequence and get what ever you want if you make people feel sorry for you or simply say you’re sorry. Jake repeatedly snubs the girl because she invited him to a party that he got beat up at. This hurts her feelings more than once but mere seconds after a weak apology they start making out. In another example, Jake gets to be recognized as the school’s top badass while acting like popularity means nothing to him. He also gets to skip the foundational training of his instructor and break his most sacred house rule twice, and he still becomes Jean’s favorite student and confidant. He even gets to drive the film’s cool car towards the end after its owner gets beat up.

Everything about the movie screams, “it’s all about me and what I can get with minimal effort.” The hero’s mild gesture at being humble or high-minded in the face of the materialism, chest-thumping and pettiness that surrounds him is drowned out by the suggested reality that he gets to have it all, even the respect of his enemies. The real world, heck, even movies usually make the good guys sacrifice something. Not this time. In this way the film plays to the aura of entitlement that hovers over youth today. Success in competitive martial arts should be about something more substantial.

The film was shot and released at a time when amateur MMA competition was not officially sanctioned in Florida but there is still little excuse for treating the subject so haphazardly just when MMA is trying to be recognized all throughout America as a reputable competitive sport. NEVER BACK DOWN tramples all over martial arts virtues in favor of propagating pure fantasy. It reminds me of THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, another film about a kid who goes from zero to martial arts hero. It handled this topic far better, if only because it made no attempt to appear as anything but fantasy with magic and all.

Some may say I’m overanalyzing this movie and to answer that I would say when a $21 million movie opens wide as a mainstream production for mass consumption, is targeted at teens and attempts to deal with reality-based martial arts culture, it deserves all due criticism for opting to present the wrong message and representation about what mixed martial arts is and should be.

The only films that have so far done MMA fighting any justice, either in the true spirit of martial arts or purely as martial arts entertainment are David Mamet’s REDBELT, Wilson Yip’s FLASH POINT and Isaac Florentine’s UNDISPUTED 2. None of these, however, can be considered to MMA what ROCKY is to boxing or THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN is to kung fu. While the popularity of mixed martial arts continues to grow the world still waits for a proper MMA movie to capture a measure of the incredible skill, raw excitement and authenticity that the Ultimate Fighting Championship delivers.