"Never Back Down" may be the most bloodthirsty revenge picture since "Walking Tall," and its deceptively sunny "O.C." teen vibe - not to mention its periodic reminders that violence doesn't solve anything, in between close-ups of bloody spittle flying through the air in slow motion - only adds to the weirdness.
Look: At heart, most of us are no different from Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire." We don't want realism, we want magic, or at least energetic crud we can believe in. For its target audience, "Never Back Down" may well be that crud, offering bone-crunching, face-smashing mixed martial arts (MMA) action, wrapped around the triumph of an angry young Iowa transplant who, like Billy Jack, achieves inner peace through the severe kicking of behinds.
A "tough kid with a big heart," as the press materials say, Tyler (Sean Faris, who looks a lot like Tom Cruise circa "All the Right Moves") never forgave himself for not taking the keys from his drunk of a father, now deceased. Mom (Leslie Hope), Tyler and Tyler's tennis-phenom little brother (Wyatt Smith) leave Iowa for Florida, whereupon Tyler gets sucked into the world of underground brawling. Authorized or un-, MMA, according to this film, allows for everything but a belt sander.
The No. 1 MMA sociopath (Cam Gigandet) sees Tyler as fresh meat, ready for tenderizing. In the Pat Morita role, Djimon Hounsou offers to our hero sage advice as an MMA coach saddled with his own father issues. The coach lives in his gym, just as Morgan Freeman's character did in "Million Dollar Baby." Is this a requirement for all trainers of color?
Romance? Yes! The misunderstood hottie (Amber Heard) finds herself torn between her bully boyfriend and Tyler, whose abs are roughly as impressive as the bad guy's. Director Jeff Wadlow treats the whole thing like a workout video, edited (two editors worked on this) for maximum whaaaammmmm! and crrrrraackkkk! And for the really vicious kicks to the ribs, the screen flashes fleeting but extremely silly X-ray images of the bones inside the victim at the moment of impact. All the while the soundtrack concentrates on songs with lyrics about "not backing down."
It's a little "Karate Kid," a smidge of "Fight Club" (with none of the ironic ambivalence toward violence that David Fincher brought to that story), a lot of "The O.C." (evil boy Gigandet played an evil boy on that series), and presto: probable hit. I guess I'm more of a "Step Up 2 the Streets" guy when it comes to teen-aimed hooey. I'm a lovah, not a fightah. And the further I get from my teen years, the less satisfaction I draw from fairy tales whose primary goal is to get the audience in the mood, by whatever cheap means necessary, to see the other guy bleed.
