Never back down

About 20 minutes and three fight scenes into 'Never Back Down' and you'd swear you've seen this movie before. That's probably because you have.

There may be no Mr Miyagi nor, thank god, Ralph Macchio, but make no mistake 'Never Back Down' could have been named 'The Karate Kid – MMA', because you can barely tell them apart.

Sure, Djimon Hounsou is way more believable as a hardened Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) pro than Pat Morita was as a karate master, ditto Sean Faris is way more likely to kick your ass than Macchio ever would be, but from start to finish 'Never Back Down' is a carbon copy of 'The Karate Kid', albeit far more entertaining.

Faris plays pissed off high school kid Jake Tyler who has moved to Orlando with his mom and younger brother — a tennis prodigy who is attending an academy in the state. His father died in a drunken car crash and Jake is carrying the blame on his shoulders.

Problem is Jake does most of his talking with his fists, cue rich kid Cam (Ryan McCarthy) who happens to be a MMA fighter with "wicked skills".

When Jake gets invited to a party by hot blonde Baja (Amber Heard) he reckons things are looking up. Well, that is until Cam challenges him to a fight in front of pretty much everybody at the school and leaves Jake picking his teeth up off the floor…

Before long he has been introduced to Jean Roqua (Honsou) a former pro who runs an MMA school in the area. Of course, Roqua has one rule — no fighting outside of his school, which really defeats the purpose of training in the first place. It also sort of makes a mockery of Roqua’s catch-phrase "Never Back Down"…

But make no mistake the fight scenes are pretty intense — no crane kicks here people — and the brutality of the kids baying for blood makes me think the kids in the States have little to do.

As the story runs its course we have more than enough opportunities to take in the fighting and it is here that 'Never Back Down' makes you forget about the 'Karate Kid'. But when the fighting ends you won't be able to shake the similarities.

We all know how it ends. Jake's dorky mate gets beaten up by Cam, and the new kid is forced to take part in the annual underground MMA tournament. Does he get his revenge on Cam? Come on! Do I even have to tell you?