By James Brydon
Sportsnet.ca
How many times have you seen an action movie in which it was really hard to make out what exactly is going on in any fight scenes? Well, that wasn’t the case in Never Back Down, the first of what is sure to be a succession of major motion pictures based on the latest craze in the world of sports – and pop culture overall – mixed martial arts.
The story is about Jake Tyler (played by relative newcomer Sean Faris, who looks a lot like a young Tom Cruise). He’s a high-school football player fueled by anger, in part because of the guilt he feels over his father’s death in a drunken car crash.
After an on-field incident (read: Jake’s fist meets opposing player’s head) Jake and his family move to Orlando, Fla., where he attempts to fit in to a new school in mid-semester. Enter dorky kid Max who befriends him, hot blonde Baja who shows interest in him and hot blonde’s boyfriend Ryan (played by Cam Gigandet of The O.C.), who challenges him to a mixed martial arts fight after seeing a video of what he did on the football field. We’ve seen that Jake has good striking skills. But this MMA thing is new to him.
“I’m not into that UFC stuff,” Jake says. He’s about to learn.
After getting beaten and humiliated by Ryan, his new friend Max convinces him to visit MMA master Jean Roqua, played by two-time Oscar-nominated actor Djimon Hounsou. Jake comes to Jean’s gym hoping to learn what he needs in order to unleash his anger back at Ryan. But what he finds out is that training with Jean is not about taking part in some fight club. It’s about art and discipline.
As far as fundamental movie elements go, I was pleasantly surprised. The camera work gave a good sense of every move, impressive considering how complicated mixed martial arts can be. From a mixed martial arts perspective, it seemed to do the sport justice.
One scene I particularly enjoyed was in Jake’s first fight against Ryan, where Ryan employed a tactic of repeatedly kicking Jake in the leg. That wasn’t to hinder Jake’s ability to kick but, as Ryan explains, to hinder his ability to put weight on it, which in turn hinders his ability to throw effective fists. This was reminiscent of the strategy Keith Jardine used to defeat Chuck Liddell last September.
While the movie has “Karate Kid for the 21st Century” feel to it, this was not a movie filled with “wax on, wax off” moments. The actual training and fight scenes were dealt with in a serious way and using real tactics. There were no “crane kicks” here.
That’s not to say the film was entirely cheese-free. There were definitely some of your typical corny elements to the story and I heard more than a few snickers in the theatre at the advance screening. But I found the characters’ actions to be quite believable. If I could put myself in the shoes of those characters, I can’t say I wouldn’t follow a similar path.
The movie certainly is riding on the current popularity of MMA, but it doesn’t do it cheaply. If you like MMA, it’s worth seeing.
