Never Back Down - Mai arrendersi

Has the advantage of being the first film of its kind (before the franchise was dragged to the minors). It is bright, it is pretty, it is well produced and it holds the attention. A relic of a bygone era.

The advertisements for this movie do it serious injustice. I was standing in the lobby of a movie theater at a free showing, and almost didn't walk in, because the trailers and ads had me convinced it was a complete waste of time. The advertisements portray the film as being merely a vehicle for shirtless boys to beat on each other and hot girls to wear bikinis. While there is no shortage of either, the movie has a strong underlying theme and a decent plot.

At the thematic level, the movie is about accepting responsibility for your actions, controlling your emotions, and making good choices. It's as much about motivations as macho.

Yes, it is a teen-targeted movie. You've got rich kids running around in massive mansions driving expensive cars, but that's just the setting. You've got people beating the crap out of each other, but that's just a plot device. The heart of the movie is about personal growth and making choices. It's not an empty action flick or a taped brawl.

It's not the best film of the year, and it may well wind up as a late night cable movie in a few months, but it's nowhere near as bad as people expect. It's definitely worth the price of a rental, and worth the $10 to see it in theaters, if you've got no other plans. I blame the negativity largely on the advertising, which tries to sell it as "just another fight movie".

Honestly I don't know the answer. This has been done so many times before. Still I keep watching parts again and again if not the whole movie. My guilty pleasure.

. . . Never Back Down was still a really great movie that I had a lot of fun watching, and I was surprised with how much I actually ended up liking it. Of course this film is really very predictable and was basically just a rip-off version of Fight Club, The Karate Kid, and movies like that in general that was basically aimed at 16, 17, and 18 year old boys, but it was really enjoyable if you just judge it based on an actual movie and not what audience it's trying to pull in.

It did get pretty annoying and downright unbelievable at times, but I have to give this movie it's props, because the acting was done very professionally for a bunch of model-body teenage actors, and it also managed to keep me so interested and entertained through the entire film with semi adroit and crafty, motivating scenes and material matter. It gets a bit mediocre, as I have said, and some stuff just falls flat, but they handle everything they lack so well with other interesting and appealing scenes and substance, excluding the featherweight dialogue, haha.

Overall, I was so happy with the outcome of this movie, because while being cliché, and certainly not worthy of winning an Oscar or anything like that, it was really enjoyable, and I had a great time watching it. If you lower your expectations and free your mind, I bet you will too. I suggest you see it if you can appreciate it for what it is. If anything else, there is Cam Gigandet and Sean Faris shirtless.

It's interesting how this movie seems to be a watershed for mma. Mixed martial arts really are making the transition from underground, extreme bleeding-edge expressions of combat sport to a mainstream and accepted pastime, and that shows in the commentary about this film. Those who have a clue about mma aren't saying the same things as those who don't.

I have no patience for critics, anyway. They're worse than academics, really, and nothing they say can be trusted. You want to know if a movie sucked? Listen to the people.

This movie didn't suck. Okay, it wasn't Cool Hand Luke, but is that really what you were expecting when you saw the advance poster? It went to great lengths to make a Classical reference from the Iliad significant thematically, and how often does a "teensploitation" flick do that? It even employed a little finesse in some of the on-screen relationships, and in ways that seemed to hold a little verisimilitude, even. If the filmmakers had made Jake Tyler a gay youth fighting for free speech in the school newspapers, the critics would have loved it. All they saw was scary teen violence, so they…well, less than loved it.

Truth is that the movie isn't really glorifying violence; it's glorifying the quotidian, although it does seem to consider violence an acceptable means to an end. If you like mixed martial arts and you're not too delicate to watch stylized violence, rent it when it comes out. If you'd really rather watch 27 Dresses (you know who you are) tell your boyfriend it's chick flick time.