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Last Updated: Apr 18th, 2008 - 08:40:10 |
“Never Back Down,” the latest coming-of-age fight story to hit the big screen, is notable for its pairing of the young Tom Cruise look-alike, Sean Faris, with Djimon Hounsou, who has made a career by being the big, Black antithesis to Hollywood standards of stardom.
As in the films “The Four Feathers,” “In America” and, perhaps, “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life,” Hounsou plays in this film a sort of “magic Negro” who helps a White person out of a bad predicament. Jake Tyler (Faris) is the angry, teen son of a single mother who moves from Iowa to a sunny playground of Orlando, Florida, so that Jake’s younger brother, a tennis prodigy, can pursue his sport.
Jake’s anger and propensity to fight is only exacerbated in his new school and environment, where students are obsessed with a brutal form of gladiator-type extreme fighting. Without protective gear and only shielded from the hard ground by a mat, opponents punch, slap, kick, wrestle and pound each other until one fighter is either knocked out or “taps out” three times to indicate surrender.
Jake is caught unaware at a party hosted by the local bully and fighting champion, Ryan McCarthy, who proceeds to beat down Jake. This is where Hounsou enters in the role of Jean Roqua. As the owner and trainer of a local gym, Roqua agrees to take in Jake and train him but is wary of the boy’s anger. He warns him to not use his fighting skills outside of the gym, all the while Jake is determined to use these skills to get revenge against Ryan.
The training and fighting scenes in this film are energetic and intense, bordering on manic in some moments. The relationship that develops between Roqua and Jake, as well as some exploration of Roqua’s past, allow Hounsou to break out of the “magic Negro” syndrome and be a fully realized character with a family, a story and some reasons of his own to be angry. As always, Hounsou fills out his role with a lot of finesse and the young Faris is likeable and believable as a working class underdog in a new city filled with rich kids.
A sports movie for a teen boy is sort of the male version of a dance movie for a teen girl. The underdog-makes-good plot is somewhat predictable, as is the teen romance between Jake and the local blonde bombshell named Baja Miller (Amber Heard). Still, for another insight into the world of bored rich kids who have nothing better to do than beat down each other for sport, “Never Back Down” might provide two hours of entertainment.
This review also appeared on Tom Joyner's BlackAmericaWeb.com,/i>
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