Running time: 1 hr 50 mins
Cast:
Sean Faris
Amber Heard
Cam Gigandet
Djimon Hounsou
Leslie Hope
Critical consensus:
** out of *****
(24% Fresh Rating!)
Matt's Take:
D-
Mikey @ The Movies Official Rating:
1/2 out of *****
At his new high school, a rebellious teen is lured into an underground fight club, where he finds a mentor in a mixed martial arts veteran.
MY REVIEW
Can I start this review by asking why aren't teenagers playing teenagers?? Why do you have 26 year olds playing high school students?? This isn't the era of the Friday the 13th movies. This is 2008, surely you can find a few good looking, well built 17 or 18 year olds out there that can do movies like this...right? Maybe that would be considered some form of child pornography seeing as how these guys shirts are off half the movie, I suppose to please the female audience. Well, nothing about this crapfest pleased this film reviewer...then again, I'm no lady.
What we have here is a poorly acted, poorly written high school revenge movie. I understand why Sean Faris' (Yours, Mine and Ours)character wants to fight Cam Gigandet's (Who's Your Caddy?, Twilight) character, but I don't get the vice versa. Faris has pent up anger about his fathers death and his mean mommy only to be picked on by Gigandets persona. Gigandets (what the heck kind of last name is that anyway??) character is so poorly written, we don't truly get to the heart of his anger. His father is the only explanation we get. But why so much hostility towards this new guy? He saw a clip of the guy fighting on youtube, and met him for 3 seconds before he made him his nemisis. I didn't understand, but he was adament about beating the crap out of the new kid at school! What the heck?? Whatever though.
Both these leading men are pretty awful, and both aren't very noticeable stars. I don't see this film launching their film careers. Also pretty dreadful was Amber Heard, she plays a character named Baja. 'Nuff said. The curly headed sidekick played by Evan Peters (the kid from the amazing ABC cancelled show, Invasion), was so annoying and beyond ridiculous. Glad he got beat down! Then theres Leslie Hope (some may know as the late Mrs. Jack Bauer from season one of TV's 24), who was probably the "best" performance of the whole movie. Not saying much, she just didn't have enough screentime for me to completely be disgusted by her. Finally we have OSCAR nominee Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond). A few years back, this guy was my personal winner for Best Supporting Actor for Blood Diamond. He is a talented actor, and one who is just beginning to become a noticeable big actor...then he does this...and it just confuses me. How can he read the script of Blood Diamond (a fantastic film!) and even think a film like this could compare?? Well...happens to the best of them I suppose.
Theres no saving grace here. The filmaking is remarkably bad. This is supposed to be an exciting fight movie...but the quality of the direction is so bad we don't feel that excitement. Least I didn't. The big climatic fight at the end had no "punch" so to speak. I could care a less who the won the danged thing! I'm just going to ruin this, the "good guy" of the film wins, he beats down that kid with a weird last name. Yay, great for him. These guys are mortal enemies the entire film, yet in one of the very next scenes after the big beat down, they see eachother and give eachother a smile and head nod approval...WHAT?! So are they best buds now? Geez!
Finally, this film has a terrible message. From what I took the message was this: "when it comes down to it, you need to strike down your enemies with your fist. All your problems are solved with violence. We may not want to do it, we may know it's wrong, but ultimately it comes down to a smack down." Yeah, I'm not kidding. There was no actual moral of the story, just...beat the ever living crap out of your arch enemy, make him bleed from every part of his face. KILL him if you have to. My goodness, this is what we are showing our youth? Wonderful, as if todays youth isn't shown enough awfulness.
This movie sucked.
CURRENT MIKEY @ THE MOVIES AWARD NOMINATIONS:
- Worst Dramatic Film of the Year
- Worst Screenplay of the Year
- Worst Leading Male Actor of the Year (Sean Faris)
- Worst Supporting Male Actor of the Year (Cam Gigandet)
- Worst Supporting Male Actor of the Year (Evan Peters)
- Worst Supporting Female Actor of the Year (Amber Heard)
To view this films theatrical trailer, click this link: Never Back Down
*This is the 87th new film I've seen and reviewed this year.
*This film is now on DVD.
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