Never Surrender – DVD Review

 

Take every Stallone movie every made, mix in softcore porn interjected in the middle of badly choreographed fight scenes, sprinkle in acting skills that would make high school drama students look like Scorsese leads, and you have Never Surrender: a primal, bloody experience that caters to every facet of the alpha-male libido. 

Let’s start with the plot, shall we? Diego, a world renowned MMA prizefighter gets drafted into an underground no-holds-barred fighting tournament, run by whom I can best deduce to be a knock-off Bond villain; somewhere between falling in love with a prostitute and knocking the shit out of anything with a bigger dick than him, he decides it best to play Prince Valiant and free all the poor little hookers who play as prizes to the rest of the tournament fighters. Exposition issues regarding the dozens of random plot interjections aside, the main storyline is so convoluted, there’s little point in letting brain function higher than “Heh…boobies” take place.

I can’t honestly fathom a worse cast of characters. Every single lead role is completely underdeveloped, leaving holes in perception large enough to park a small aircraft in, and the performances given would be considered horrendous by even the lowest standards. Normally, with a film produced under the flag of an expositional glimpse into MMA fighting, the acting doesn’t have to be good, because the fight scenes tend to balance it out. One would hope this would be the case, but much to the chagrin of anybody with high hopes for Never Surrender, the fighting is about as badly orchestrated as the rest of this steaming pile.

Somewhere in here, there must be some redeeming qualities, right? Unfortunately friends, I must say that no, indeed there are not. Never Surrender takes every disgusting, misplaced preconceived notion about modern masculinity and rolls it up into a product-placement addled, 90 minute long pissing contest that should be considered a blemish in the eyes of the film-making community.

Rating: