Never Back Down: Critic Reviews

Movie is dopey. And with its emphasis on stupid violence, xylophone abs, and getting yourself on YouTube, it's yet another product that makes you feel bad about today's youth culture.

Never Back Down offers extreme fighting as the modern-day alternative to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

A naive and truly obnoxious movie about the world of Mixed Martial Arts.

Never Back Down is teensploitation at its most obvious -- a boneheaded cliche-rama built around six-pack-ab standoffs between preening studs.

The movie is just a cheesy, preposterous, semi-eroticized way of yelling, 'Fight! Fight!,' when two people go at it in the school cafeteria.

A modest surprise: better acted than needed, better made than expected.

By the time ever-noble, ever-watchable Djimon Hounsou shows up to teach earnest young Jake honor and roundhouse kicks, the power-rock and smashmouth idiocy become like a fever dream, sweaty and hard to shake off.

It's a little Karate Kid, a smidge of Fight Club...a lot of The O.C. (evil boy Gigandet played an evil boy on that series), and presto: probable hit.

Jeff Wadlow directed this exploitation flick, which seems designed for students on spring break.

You have had soup deeper than this film, and a referee should have been on hand to call foul on the acting.

With its thin characters and derivative plot, the finished product seems more like a marketing concept than an actual film.

The human body can't do or withstand the things this movie claims it can, and one can only hope that pic's probable success doesn't trigger a dramatic rise in schoolyard body-slams, arm locks and chokeholds.

A formula flick that should have tapped out in the script stage.

Even though it's as predictable as a pro-wrestling match, what it lacks in originality it makes up for in the nervous energy of youth and testosterone.

Tyler does not live on planet Earth, but planet Hollywood formula, where the storm clouds of Fight Club hang over the once charming but now seedy landscape of The Karate Kid.

Mr. Miyagi would not be pleased.

This movie isn't bad just because it follows a formula slavishly but because it does so without verve or passion.

At its core Never Back Down is just another teen exploitation movie, but middle-age viewers who wander into the theater might get the same giddy rush as the kids.

Bloody fight film has heart, but it's no champion.

While the character of Jake isn't an emotionally taxing one, Faris has his moments, especially in a low-key scene in which he attempts to explain why his character is full of rage.

Here's what I hoped for: someone to root for, someone to root against, an inspiring coach, some eye candy and, of course, training montages. I got what I wanted.