Never Back Down

Never Back Down is The Karate Kid remade for the MMA generation, and while critics despised it, the film found an enormous audience among young men who were discovering mixed martial arts through the UFC’s mid-2000s explosion. Sean Faris plays a troubled teenager who learns MMA from a philosophical mentor (a magnetic Djimon Hounsou) to defeat a school bully in an underground fighting tournament. The formula is ancient, but the fight choreography is surprisingly good, Hounsou elevates every scene he’s in, and the training montages are effective. It earned $42 million on a $20 million budget and spawned sequels that leaned harder into the action.