Review: 'Never Back Down' Packs Emotional Punch

'Never Back Down' (PG-13)(out of four)

Those in search of a rock-'em-sock-'em fightin' film, a testosterone-fueled marathon of fist-to-face fury, will find themselves more than satisfied by "Never Back Down," something of a "Karate Kid" for the mixed martial arts generation.

But what's genuinely surprising about this made-for-15-year-old-boys bit of junk food is how critical it is of the very mindset that will bring so many audiences to the theater.

Starring Sean Faris ("Yours, Mine and Ours") as the gorgeous-but-scarred, awkward-but-convincing Jake Tyler, a young man who fights to honor his dead father, and who becomes something of a school yard superhero because he proves that he can throw down like no other.

There is nevertheless an emotional turning point in the story where Jake reveals that he doesn't relish the rage circulating through his veins. To the contrary: He loathes it.

His aim, Jake says, is not to be a fighter, and unlike so many similar films which are about overgrown boys proving their machismo, Jake knows the score -- that the game is about a whole lot more than ego.

Even in the film's first, crucial scene, the violence is put in an unusual context. Jake is the captain of the football team, the flawed oldest child of a woefully dysfunctional family. Taunted by players on the other team, Jake shrugs off the insults, all too aware it's a ploy to draw a penalty. But when one of the players mentions Jake's "old man," off comes the helmet and out come the punches in a bench-clearing brawl.

In the days to come, as Jake, his sweet younger brother Charlie (Wyatt Smith) and his frustrated and exhausted mother Margot (Leslie Hope) pack up their house, we come to learn the cause of the outburst and how the once-open Jake became a chiseled recluse. Now Charlie is starting a show a serious tennis talent, and Margot has made the decision to up and move the family to a town where Charlie can attend an elite tennis academy and where Jake will have to fit in with a whole new crowd.

But during Jake's first week at a new school, it becomes clear that his reputation has preceded him, as online footage of his football brawl has made him something of a cafeteria celebrity. The other young men at the school, all members in something of a fight club for juniors, set their sights on Tyler, pummeling him at a house party to prove that they are stronger than the new kid. Still limping and sporting bruises, Jake arrives at the gym of mixed martial arts expert John Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), committing himself to a 24/7 training regiment, committing himself to one-upping those who jumped him.

Only naturally, there's a big fighting tournament down the road, and the romantic interest that Jake wants to impress through his fighting skills. But the force in the movie that few will be expecting is Hounsou, who, as Roqua, isn't just a fight instructor, but a teacher. He insists that fighting only occurs in his gym, and that if any of his students fights outside those four walls, they will never be allowed on his mats again.

So ironically enough, "Never Back Down" isn't about always landing a punch, but about learning how to channel that anger and rage -- that testosterone and temper -- inward. It's less a movie about trouncing one's opponents than about defeating one's own inner demons, as evidenced by an outburst from Jake in which he confesses that he doesn't want to keep resorting to fighting, doesn't want to keep embarrassing his mother and his brother.

It's an unexpected slice of heart in a movie that so easy could have gone heartless, and it's enough to make "Never Back Down" the kind of fighter movie that even a pacifist could find worthwhile.