LOS ANGELES -- It's one thing for a well-muscled Oscar-nominated actor to look like he can kick butt. It's another to know he can.

And as many roundhouse headkicks as there are in the mixed-martial-arts high-school movie Never Back Down, it's the A-list double Oscar-nom in the cast who's the only real fighter. None of the principals except Djimon Hounsou had any training at all when this high-concept Karate-Kid-meets-Ultimate Fighting got underway.

The Benin-born Hounsou -- Oscar-nominated for Blood Diamond and In America (and should have been for Amistad) -- became proficient in kung fu and boxing in his troubled days in Paris, as much because "I saw too many Bruce Lee movies" as to stay safe in the streets he called home for a while.

"Having friends who tended to want to challenge you was another reason," he says. "One of my best friends in France, we had a competition going as to who could kick stronger or punch better, who could survive kung fu lessons and boxing lessons the same day, every day."

Hounsou was sent at 13 by his parents from a village in Benin, Africa, to school in France. But he dropped out and, by his account, spent time sleeping under bridges before being discovered by the designer Thierry Mugler and graduating from the streets to the catwalks of Europe.

"In that situation (on the streets), you may be tall and seem imposing and all that. But the idea is to be equipped when some crazy person wants to challenge you -- and I've had that happen."

Not likely a movie that will earn him another Oscar nom, Never Back Down is director Jeff Wadlow's attempt to update The Karate Kid for a generation of teens who post cellphone videos of ad hoc fight tournaments on YouTube.

In Never Back Down, Sean Faris (late of the TV series Reunion and Life As We Know It) plays Jake Tyler, a midwestern kid with a temper, who's shouldering the guilt from the part he feels he played in his dad's drunk-driving death. When his mom (Leslie Hope) moves him and his brother (Wyatt Smith) to Orlando and a high school of rich kids, 'Net video of a football brawl follows him. Soon he's centred out by the school bully, a mixed-martial-artist named Ryan (Cam Gigandet) who humiliates Jake at a party to impress his girlfriend (Amber Heard).

Encouraged by a sympathetic new friend (Evan Peters), Jake joins a mixed-martial-arts school run by a Brazilian named Jean Roqua (Hounsou). The conundrum: Roqua will teach him to fight, but only if he swears an oath never to fight outside the gym. To back down or get revenge, that is, like, the question.

Director Jeff Wadlow says Hounsou was key to the whole movie -- a Mr. Miyagi you could believe. "Basically, with the character of Roqua, I knew we needed someone who knew what he was teaching. No disrespect to Pat Morita, but I did not want a little old guy beating up big guys. That was cool in the '80s. But mixed martial arts is a very grounded sport, and I wanted a guy who could show you what he was talking about. And Djimon is an incredible physical presence.

"And he still had to be wise, he couldn't come across as a brawler or tough. He had to have a wisdom and savvy, and Djimon has delivered that in every performance he's ever given. I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about his life, and this guy has had a life of real lows and I think he brings that to the screen."

Which leads us to ask, what is a guy with Hounsou's credits doing in a pure-popcorn movie strictly aimed at teens?

"Why not go to a movie and have a great time and be entertained by a film?" Hounsou says. "Everything you do doesn't have to be that heavy. And it's very heavy to be doing the Amistad movie, to be doing the Blood Diamond movie, to be doing Four Feathers or whatever. Those movies are so heavy on you and they take their toll.

"It will be so heavy in the morning going to work on the set and knowing you have to pour your heart out today. When I was making Blood Diamond, I was hoping, 'Ah, I hope tomorrow is not as heavy as today. And y'know, day after day is just heavier and heavier. It's so nice to wake up and go to shoot a film like Never Back Down that's just entertaining."

Of course, emotional pain simply ends up being replaced by the other kind. "I do not exercise every day right now, I've gone lazy," he says with a laugh. "But again, after you make a film like this, to the bones I was so sore for months. You're fighting eight hours a day. The acting part was minimal."

A few popcorn films will also help Hounsou toward his goal of making films that reflect his native Africa. He's got the prestige, but "it's always a question of money." Ed Zwick is attached to one project "about a forbidden love story, so much standing in the way of it, the whole world."

He still visits Benin yearly, "a favourite son as you call it. I'm really passionate about my country now because we have a really good president -- Boni Yayi, that's his name. Thank god, he's a businessman before he became president so he's not looking for the country's money to eat, and he's not power hungry. Benin is a leading example of democracy in Africa. We never fight, we're too scared to fight," he says with a laugh.

Naturally, he's also a fan of the one U.S. presidential candidate with African grandparents.

"I say Barack (Obama)! Listen, it's so beautiful for a country that stands for so much in the eyes of the world, that brings so much dream to the rest of the world. And yet we have created so much chaos in the world these past few years. There can be no better person to go in there and say, 'I'm the President of the United States of America. What is your problem?'

"He's the first generation of (leaders) of African descent in America. It's beautiful. You see around the world, everybody's certainly embracing him and hoping he shines."

Karate flick joins the club

What hath Brad Pitt and Edward Norton wrought? According to Chris Hauty -- who scripted Never Back Down -- the movie Fight Club has become so cultish, it has dovetailed with the Ultimate Fighting/mixed-martial-arts phenomenon to inspire high schoolers across the country to create their own fight clubs for 'Net perusal.

"My son was a sophomore at Santa Monica High School, and they had what they called Riots," recalls Hauty (Homeward Bound II: Lost In San Francisco). "They were more like just fights, and kids gathered around and took out cellphones and videotaped clips.

"And he came home and told me about it, and we got on MySpace and I started to think it was a pretty interesting phenomenon. I did a little more research across the country, and in some high schools, there were organized 'Fight Clubs.' That's what they called them, although obviously (for legal reasons) we couldn't call them that in the movie.

"I thought, 'This is a way for a movie to imitate life imitating a movie.' "

It's pretty amateurish stuff for the most part, he says, "a lot of flailing and kicking. But it's also fascinating. It's kids doing it on their own, creating the product and consuming the product."

It's part of a mixed-martial-arts culture that has seen the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) overshadow boxing in popularity. "It's the fastest growing sport in America and I think you're living under a rock if you didn't know it," says director Jeff Wadlow. "UFC is to mixed martial arts what the NBA is to basketball. It's the highest level there is, but there are other levels of competition."

Hauty becomes, well, haughty when it's suggested that Fight Club could at least lean on fighting as a metaphor for its anti-consumerist message. Never Back Down, meanwhile, is pure entertainment and thus more open to accusations of gratuitousness.

"Well, there's clearly a message that suggests glorifying violence and making a spectacle out of violence is not a way to go -- which is ultimately what our hero chooses to do: follow the fight philosophy of his mentor. When he chooses to fight, it's to protect those he cares for.

"The movie is called Never Back Down, which means never back down from someone who's going to hurt or do violence to those you care about. It's not called Kick Somebody's Ass."