Never Back Down (Single-Disc Edition)

• Features include: -MPAA Rating: PG-13 -Format: DVD-Runtime: 113 minutes

A troubled young rugby player is given the choice between jail or playing for a rival team coached by a man known for building not only championship teams, but championship boys. Based on a true story, Forever Strong offers stand up and cheer sports drama combined with the consequences of a strong ethical code to achieve victory on and off the field

Features include:

•MPAA Rating: PG-13
•Format: DVD
•Runtime: 113 minutes
If you get caught up in the sweaty fight scenes in Never Back Down--and, despite the formulaic plot, you very likely will--it will be due to the sheer kinetic pleasure of muscular bodies in motion. Jake (Tom Cruise look-alike Sean Faris, Yours, Mine, and Ours), full of anger after his father's death, starts to find a place for himself at his new Fl! orida high school--until Ryan, the head of an underground mixed-martial arts (Cam Gigandet, The O.C.), picks Jake out as a prime opponent. After being trounced by Ryan in front of everyone in school, Jake begins training under the firm, moral guidance of a martial arts master with a hidden past (Djimon Hounsou, a long way from Blood Diamond, but still bringing his essential gravitas to the screen). Basically, Never Back Down boils down to a cross between The Karate Kid and Fight Club, minus the sociopolitical commentary. The story and characters are a bundle of featherweight cliches, but that won't stop the aggressively edited fight sequences from stoking a viewer's adrenaline. Also starring Amber Heard (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) as the very blonde love interest, who (along with an abundance of girls in bikinis--'cause, y'know, it's Florida) is there to assure everyone that these handsome, chiseled boys are strictly heterosexual! . --Bret Fetzer