Brawn and no brains; NEVER BACK DOWN (15, 113 mins) 4/10 In a nutshell: If brawling's your bag, it's perfect.

IF the classic '80s fairy-tale The Karate Kid sparred with cult '90s hit Fight Club, the bloodied, bruised pulp that emerges from the melee would be Never Back Down, a homoerotic tale of bare-knuckle brawling guys, bikini-clad girls and broken families.

Director Jeff Wadlow and screenwriter Chris Hauty think they have their target audience pegged.

The impossibly muscular leads lose their shirts at every available opportunity, buxom love interests wander around the streets in scraps of material that barely constitute swimwear and fight sequences are edited with hyperactive glee.

A popular videosharing website plays a vital role in stoking the enmity between characters, and the soundtrack screeches from the pounding rock of My Chemical Romance to the pop-rap swagger of Soulja Boy.

While the film has its undeniable appeal to the eyes and ears, there's very little to engage the mind.

The storyline is achingly predictable but the young cast fill their underwritten roles and undersized shirts with assurance.

High school American football player Jake Tyler (Sean Faris) moves from rural Iowa to sun-kissed Orlando with his mother Margot (Leslie Hope) and impressionable younger brother Charlie (Wyatt Smith).

Jake blames himself for the death of his father in a drink driving crash, taking out his rage and despair by brawling with rival players on the field.

He quickly falls under the spell of one particular blonde classmate, Baha (Amber Heard).

Unfortunately, Baja is the sexy plaything of resident fight club king Ryan (Cam Gigandet) and he goads Jake into a skirmish at a party, where the new boy takes a beating.

Geek Max (Evan Peters) is impressed with Jake's bravado and introduces him to gym owner and martial arts mentor Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), who moulds Jake into a fine-tuned killing machine.