What do we learn from Never Back Down? We learn this: Love in its most purest condition—love as love, love as nothing but love, a love supreme—can only be extracted from this experience of two people who are brought together by a cosmic concatenation, love at first sight. Love at second sight is diluted; love at third sight is doomed. Pure/potent/perfect love can only come from that sudden flame of awareness, that lock of the eyes, loss of breath, beating of the heart, heating of the blood—that vertiginous moment when the world around the strangers vanishes and that which remains is the nascent/natural/naked beam of their connection.

In Never Back Down, Jake Tyler (Sean Faris) moves with this poor family (a brother and mother—his father is dead) to a new city, Orlando; enters a new high school; and meets new people. On his first encounter with Baja Miller (Amber Heard)—the hottest honey of the school, and the girlfriend of the hottest hunk of the school, Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet)—a connection is made: There is love between the two. Sunshine blooms between the hottest honey in the school and the new kid on the block. This is the event. This is the moment of truth.

It is now up to Baja to either betray this truth/event or be faithful to it. Her once complete and closed life has been opened by a new possibility: She must either stand where she is (with her hunk and his circle of muscle-building friends) or make a leap of faith. The entire movie is about this decision and nothing else. Will beautiful Baja betray or be faithful to the truth-event—love at first sight? And if she is faithful, does this make her a better person? At the end, the movie’s message is simple and clear: Love at first sight is not only the most purest form of love but also the kind of love that a weak person rejects and strong person embraces. Never back down.

NEVER BACK DOWN DIR. JEFF WADLOW | RATED PG-13 | RATED R

Tags: Film, Love, never back down, Reviews, true love