Never Back Down

This unlikely hybrid of The Karate Kid (1984) and Fight Club (1999) is formulaic and derivative, but sufficiently well made to work as both teen-angst melodrama and bone-rattling brawl picture.

In between the better-than-usual training montages, fist-pumping hard-rock soundtrack and lines like, "He's got crazy skills," Never Back Down does, in fact, have some meat on its bones.

Call Never Back Down The Karate Kid for MySpace cadets. Call it Teen Fight Club.

But as predictable as it is, Never Back Down is more entertaining than it has any right to be.

If The Karate Kid hooked up with Step Up 2 The Streets, Never Back Down would be their love child.

Director Jeff Wadlow finds a sort of nobility in the subject matter than you might not expect for a film that consists in large part of bloodthirsty mobs clamoring for violence.

Never Back Down, like its characters, is very lean and not too complicated. It might pass the time for a younger, target audience seeing this oft-told story for the first time.

Finally, a movie that backs up my contention that The Hills would be immeasurably improved if Lauren Conrad got into ultimate fighting.

Never Back Down is an ultra-sleek mixed-martial-arts teen drama, an updated Karate Kid, a Fight Club for the viral-video generation.

It's The Karate Kid for the 21st century, streamlined and hardcore, which means there's lots of nü-metal sludge on the soundtrack.

As completely incomprehensible as it is brutally violent, it works out as a guilty little pleasure, particularly if you just ride the wave of its pulsating musical score.

Never Back Down is no Afterschool Special; it's more like Welcome to the O.C.'s Fight Club.

Though its script leaves no cliché unturned, Never Back Down is a notch above the norm in the genre, mainly due to director Wadlow's ability to keep everything on track.

If you're the type of person who's scoffed at the trailers, you'll no doubt do the same in the theatre. But those who can't wait to see it will certainly get what they paid for.

Never Back Down may be the most bloodthirsty revenge picture since Walking Tall.

It is a little bit violent for most audiences, though there might not be enough action for Ultimate Fighting Championship fans.

With faint echoes of both Fight Club and the first Karate Kid, it isn't so much a movie as it is a nearly two-hour infomercial for the increasingly popular combat sport of mixed martial arts.

The power-rock and smashmouth idiocy become like a fever dream, sweaty and hard to shake off.

Never Back Down largely follows The Karate Kid template, with more rock 'n' roll and less heart.

It's an energetic excuse for young actresses to don bikinis, for young men to strip off the shirts and engage in sanctioned and unsanctioned fighting, and for teens to feel as if it's them against the world.

If you thought the problem with Step Up 2: The Streets was that there weren't enough kicks to the head, this virtual remake is for you.

Never Back Down is a junior version of Fight Club, only with no movie stars and different moves.

Director Jeff Wadlow, a relative newcomer, relies on tried and true mechanical devices -- a pounding rock score, a hyperactive camera and an unrelenting series of close-ups.

Never Back Down has some unexpected moments that makes it entertaining despite its unoriginal mismash of plot devices.

Never Back Down is essentially the poor man's The Karate Kid, if Karate Kid was somehow released in response to Fight Club.

This movie is mostly devoted to scenes of curvaceous, coddled high school girls and gladiator wannabes egging their macho warriors on or swapping images of them on YouTube.

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.

While too bland and stupid to be offensive, Never Back Down spouts a hollow message of nonviolence while celebrating the brutal satisfaction of beating the crap out of someone.

For a movie that uses the word "sequaciousness" and draws a life lesson from The Iliad, Never Back Down is awfully moronic.

A bash-a-thon for boneheads that aspires to be the Fast and the Furious of the mixed martial arts set.

The fight scenes are well-choreographed, moving quickly from punches and kicks to complicated holds. But the two-hour length is quite long for a movie with no suspense, surprise or humor.

Never Back Down is a Karate Kid for the extreme fighting crowd.

The film might be worth a look if you're in the mood for a brainless, numbing, recycled heap that will assault your senses, and there is an audience who loves this kind of movie.

A soulless blend of bad action, bad acting and worse writing, Never Back Down is tolerable only if merciless wisecrackers are offering commentary.

Two pretty high school guys who look like they'd be more at home in Sephora than in a boxing ring take up brawling in Never Back Down, a formula flick that should have tapped out in the script stage.

Watching a movie about young people beating one another's brains out -- the makers of Never Back Down would have us believe -- is all right as long as the script includes sprinklings of warrior wisdom.

The hoary good-bad-boy-versus-bad-bad-boy melodrama is tarted up with the topicality of mixed-martial arts and YouTubed high school fight clubs in Never Back Down.

Plot points are lifted from The Karate Kid and there are more than a few moments that emulate Rocky, but not in a good way.

In a previous life, I must have stolen a kid's candy. As punishment, I've been forced to review the wretched Never Back Down.