dvd review: never back down

*pic courtesy of amazon.com

okay, so you're probably wondering why the hell i'd netflix this movie right? two words - cam gigandet. how about one more word after that - shirtless. :-)

cam gigandet played the bad guy vampire in twilight (that blond wig he had to wear did absolutely nothing for him, looks wise that is). he also plays the bad guy in never back down. oh and he also played the bad guy on the oc - volchok - who was responsible for marissa's death at the end of the series.

to sum it up nicely, never back down is the ufc/mma version of the karate kid in every possible way. so that makes cam gigandet the new johnny "put him in a body bag" lawrence (technically it was another cobra kai that said those words, but ya get my drift), and subsequently cam is also the new william zabka since he's now played back to back to back bad guy roles just like zabka.

sean faris plays jake tyler, the new kid in town (just like daniel-san) with a chip on his shoulder who gets into fights a little too easily. he gets lured by a girl to a party where he basically gets his ass handed to him by cam's character, ryan mccarthy. enter the mma training facility that his friend brings him to. enter our new mr. miyagi, the mma instructor played by djimon hounsou (aka mr fabulosity, kimora's main squeeze). cut to the cheesy training sequences. and finally cut to the "beat down" which of course is your standard underground mma fighting tournament. they might as well have been playing "you're the best....around!" while our two main characters were fighting other people and progressing their way through the tourney. seriously.

so i'm not gonna spoil the whole movie for you, but i think you get the basic jist of it all, yeah? definitely not award-winning by any means (unless you count the razzies), but still slightly entertaining nonetheless (about 1/4 through the movie it turned into a how-many-karate-kid-cliches-can-i-find game). and if nothing else, at least there's plenty of eye candy. :-)