RATING: PG-13

GENRE: Drama

RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2008

RUNNING TIME: 2 hours

VIOLENCE FACTOR: Plenty of vigorous fight sequences

BAD WORDS: About a half-dozen obscenities are uttered.

RACY? Not really, but off-screen sensuality is implied.

GRANDS:

CRITIQUE:
Your tween and teen grandchildren will respond to Never Back Down the same way you did to earlier coming-of-age melodramas. Of course, with a title lacking subtlety to that degree, you expect a youth-appropriate level of zealousness and recalcitrance. And that's pretty much what you get.

The premise of Never Back Down is just as familiar as the script openly admits by referencing Fight Club and The Karate Kid in the early going. But a funny thing happens as this seemingly derivative and formulaic drama unfolds: it comes into its own before our eyes, just as the protagonist does. Sean Faris plays a troubled high school jock who keeps getting into fights after his father dies in a drunk-driving accident.

When he, his mom, and his younger brother relocate, he finds himself the victim of taunts from new classmates who have learned all about him on the internet. After the school bully — the local mixed martial-arts champ — beats him up and publicly humiliates him, Sean discovers and signs on with an MMA coach, played by the reliably compelling and charismatic Djimon Hounsou.

But this new father-figure/mentor forbids him to use his new skills outside the training facility. Sean doesn't agree and intends to pay back his tormentor.

Never Back Down doesn't exactly advocate violence, but it certainly acknowledges it as occasionally necessary, and try as we might to ignore the inevitable cathartic comeuppance, we also find ourselves anticipating it. The clichés of the genre are at least freshly observed, and while there are quite a few MMA sequences, they never overwhelm the narrative and are skillfully choreographed. The brisk and muscular film breaks no new ground, but it wears its youthful callowness proudly.

GP Rating System:
Three Grands = Bravo, don't miss it.
Two Grands = Good enough, don't dismiss it.
One Grand = Okay, even if we dis it.