Never Back Down

Once society had found a new and creative way for people to legally kick the crap out of each other with the UFC and whatnot, it was only a matter of time before mainstream cinema jumped on the bandwagon to make a quick buck. Also, given that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) consists of half-naked men writhing around on the floor dry-humping each other, it seems logical that the film about it, Never Back Down, would be a relatively homoerotic exercise in territorial pissing, with Gossip Girl depth and a nod to the breeder contingency by including number 21 on the Maxim "Hot 100” list, Amber Heard and her big, round boobs, which are the focus of every shot she’s in. With four or five too many training montages, stereotypical characters who have "daddy” issues, entirely undeveloped romantic interests and the typical "never step away from a challenge” manure, Never Back Down truly is a piece of crap but there’s enough fighting and sweaty, shirtless boys to keep the troglodytes, homosexuals and pear-shaped girls engaged. The story itself is pretty standard, following Jake Tyler (Sean Faris), a bland, borderline sociopath — who has a tendency to beat up anyone who mentions his drunk-driving papa — after he is forced to move from Utah to Sunny California when his tennis star brother gets a scholarship. At his new school, he quickly makes friends with the twitchy and desperately insincere Max (Evan Peters) and gets his horny on for local skank Baja (Amber Heard). Inevitably, his Baja-fixation leads to a confrontation with her dime-a-dozen, gym membership-wielding boyfriend Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet), which leaves Jake broken and bruised. Determined to defend his honour, Jake starts in on a fierce training regime with the emotionally scarred Jean (Djimon Hounsou), who puts on his best Pat Morita. The film is predictable from beginning to end and rife with every cliché imaginable. The overall message that all problems can be resolved by hospitalizing people in parking lots is pretty vulgar but there are some passing insights about the power of spectatorship and how people likely wouldn’t put their lives and bodies at risk if there weren’t hundreds of slack-jawed dip shits standing around mindlessly hooting and hollering. The DVD features many deleted scenes that appear to have been trimmed mainly for length and pacing, in addition to four featurettes about the intense training regime the lead actors had to go through prior to production. They’re roughly five minutes each and feature the actors talking about how "hard” the training is and how "real” ultimate fighting is. No mentions of tea bagging are made.