This series should have been kicked to the touch lines long before it even tried to become a franchise. It's filled, as well, with plenty of laughable slow motion, opera drenched 'men marching in to battle' moments and Rocky wannabe training montages.
NEVER BACK DOWN RATED PROFESSIONAL
As others have noted, it seems to have moved away from the original street corner/back alley street fighting and seems to focus more on professional looking fighting (which may explain Adkins in the lead role), with constant references to 'how it's all a lot more organized and sophisticated' now, which further shows how far from the original source material it's strayed. Directed by James Nunn, who previously helmed the infinitesimally superior Tower Block, there is at least a little more meat on the bones and less of a boorish hooliganism love in here, but it still can't help but feel like a meaningless, decidedly odd way to spend film making money. More 'repellent, brain-numbing bilge' then.obviously the first, direct to DVD sequel to 2005's Green Street did well enough that some bright spark decided a second instalment was needed, with martial arts star Scott Adkins in the lead role. But along the way, he finds everything is not as it seems. Determined to find out who is responsible, he returns back to his old stomping ground and sets about trying to turn the new 'firm' from flabby, beer swilling no hopers to the top boys they once were. Within the confines of the formula these films seem to follow, this one is more mature, developed and interesting than the others that I’ve seen (such as the similarly titled Beatdown).STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Danny (Scott Adkins) turned his back on football violence long ago, and now devotes his life to mixed martial arts fighting, until he learns of the death of his little brother.
It’s a head-clobbering good time.Ī decent chunk of the credit for the film should go to the script. You don’t have to be an MMA fan to enjoy that. My guess would be not much.įortunately for everyone, there’s a great scene where a handcuffed Michael Jai White takes on ten cops at the same time. That said, if you’re not a fan of the sport, I don’t know what you’re going to take from them, or from the training scenes. As a big MMA fan, I found a lot to enjoy in the matches, which were dramatised but fairly faithful to real MMA bouts. It’s the punching performances in the fight scenes we’re interested in. Of course, it’s unlikely anyone is watching Never Back Down 2 for the acting performances. He makes a pretty good fist of it, though, and will be someone to keep an eye out for in the future. The size of the guy would suggest that he was well suited to playing a wall or a slab of concrete, but I wasn’t convinced he was the guy to be playing a college student concerned about his mother’s financial difficulties.
I had some reservations about Todd Duffee, who I’ve seen fighting in the UFC (where he currently holds the record for the fastest knockout, taking out Tim Hague in just seven seconds), as this is his first acting role. It’s a low budget film and it’s not packed with big names, but they all do quite well. This small point actually exemplifies the main appeal of Never Back Down 2 – it doesn’t do much different from the many similar films already on video shop shelves, but it does the same things better. Granted, it’s still fairly predictable, but in a combat-sport tournament film, anything less than entirely predictable should be commended. The four main-character split works well, introducing an element of doubt as to who will win the tournament.
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