Never back down

Pride Fighter

Anybody seen this film yet? I am a fan of MMA and I might pop in to a cinema to see this film. I heard its a karate kid type of plot, which I like (especially the cheesy montages). Hopefully its an MMA equivalent of showdown, Billy Blank's best film. It has the black guy from Gladiator as the main guys trainer, brilliant. What do you all think, is it worth a recommendation?

Galvasean

Lets put it this way, (Empire magazne to be more precise) the transformation from stacked football player to dtacked martial arts expert isnt be exactly as inspiring as the turnaround in the Karate Kid.

That and the film is supposed to be terrible.

mike65

If you have seen that hilarious ad spot on de telly then I think you can tell its not much cop somehow. Even fight fans intelligence should be respected.

Mike.

Pride Fighter

mike65 wrote: »

If you have seen that hilarious ad spot on de telly then I think you can tell its not much cop somehow. Even fight fans intelligence should be respected.

Mike.

If thats the case hopefully its so bad its good LOL:D

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

stereoroid

Just listened to Kermode's review of this: some quotes:

"a junior Fight Club"
"Triumph of the Will for Tweenies - completely Fascist!"

:eek:

Eirebear

If it was a choice between this and 27 dresses, or Step Up 2: The Streets...........

Id go home.....

TerrorFirmer

Saw it last night. Great film...

I'm sure MMA fans would take issue with the timeframe involved, but if you let it decide the movie like is already being advocating here it'd be unfair - most movies have ridiculous and unrealistic approachs to aqquired skills, but it doesn't make them any less enjoyable.

navigatoroneill

I haven't seen it but what struck me about the trailer for this and Step Up 2; the streets was that both had equal number of pretty people just one had slightly more hip-hop music and the other one had slightly more fights than the other.

princess-lala

Saw the film Tuesday at the preview, brilliant:) best film ive seen in a long time!!

Didnt look funny but theres a few really funny bits in it:D

KdjaCL

Its up there with Hottie and the Nottie.


Terrible movie for a start and fight scenes are seriously bad, sometimes fight scenes can carry a movie but the ones in this somehow make it worse.

kdjac

Fysh

Between Donald Clarke's review in The Ticket and the fact that HavokTerrorFirmer liked it (:P) I'm certain I'm not watching this. I like MMA, but I suspect I'd be better off digging out Dragon Lives Again than paying to see this crap.

internelligent

Eirebear wrote: »

If it was a choice between this and 27 dresses, or Step Up 2: The Streets...........

Id go home.....

lol

internelligent

When I saw the ad for this film yesterday the first thing I thought was, 'Sure, It'll win an Oscar, but for Best Picture, I'm not so sure'.:rolleyes:
Honestly though, I lost interest in these movies once I hit 14. I might watch this film when it's being shown on RTE 1 and I'm stuck on Achill Island for 4 days due to a storm. Then again, I spy would seem a good alternative still.

Vic Vinegar

Looks awful it has to be said. Dire even, but then i'm not 15 anymore so i wouldn't say i'm the target audience.

grames_bond

as soon as i saw the ad i thaught "kiddies fight club" not lookin forward to this!

TerrorFirmer

I don't think it even looks remotely as bad, going solely on the trailer, as people seem to think it looks...better then 70% of the **** being flung up on screen lately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmDzyS6LRto

sunzz

seen it, it's dreadful.

Fysh

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I don't think it even looks remotely as bad, going solely on the trailer, as people seem to think it looks...better then 70% of the **** being flung up on screen lately.

Going on the trailer what I see is something akin to Fight Club crossed with The OC. It looks like it's trying to go for some "authentic" fight sequences, but I sincerely doubt they'll actually have realistic-looking damage to their pretty-boy main cast members (remember Jared Leto's face getting smashed in after that scene in Fight Club?)

Frankly, I don't really care that it looks less bad than Epic Movie or The Hottie And The Nottie. It still looks like crap, and several reviews I've seen from reliable reviewers confirm that it is, indeed, crap.

TerrorFirmer

It's not exactly realistic; but then again how many movies really are? But as far as the damage does go, after one fight the 'hero' - incidentally, whose name is Jack Tyler - is covered in bruises, one eye is sealed shut, etc. It's not the classic 'trickle of blood from nostril after taking several uppercuts' scenario, if that's what you mean.

As for the reviews, the issue I had with them was that while most of them ceded it was well made and passably acted out, their criticisms included that of older actors playing what are actually meant to be effectively kids. Since when did that stop a movie being good? Most movies are guilty of this, and while I wouldn't pretend that Never Back Down is oscar worthy, it's a good, solid film that focuses primarily on training and fighting, with tolerable levels of wooing laced intermittently. It's only following a formula used by most movies, good or bad, and regardless of the genre.

Fysh

Gah, I'm going to end up watching this, knowing it's complete arse-gravy, just to have a stronger place from which to argue against you.

Whether or not other films commit the same mistakes or fall foul of the same faults is irrelevant; this film looks like tripe. Spoilt pampered rich kids who inexplicably just happen to have a few seriously hardcore martial artists among their numbers and whom regularly participate in a glorified version of fight club, which then leads to the usual Hollywood rubbish in which some underdog beats the villain of the piece at his own game, at which point the airheaded twit that passes for a female character in the piece throws herself at him.

The problem with this film is that it's The Fast & The Furious, only with MMA instead of street racing. But while it might be difficult for the masses to witness the kind of underground racing TFATF claimed to be about, it's trivially simple to tune into UFC* and watch real mixed martial artists in combat. Which means that this film's selling point isn't one.

* Yes, I know, UFC in the US has been turned into a reality TV show with too much posing and not enough fighting. That's not the point. The original UFC, and K1 for that matter, are still around and people interested in martial arts can still watch them instead of having to put up with this kind of dreck.

The Freeman

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/never_back_down/?critic=creamcrop

case closed!

Vic Vinegar

Funny quote from film.com review - "If you combined The Karate Kid with Fight Club, then threw in a dash of The O.C. and You Got Served then beat it with a stick until it was really stupid, you'd have something twice as smart as Never Back Down"

lol