Life After Fighting

Well, I actually only stumbled upon this little gem because the guy in the poster from a far looked like a beefed up Clive Owen. Alas the guy is Bren Foster, who wrote and directed the film. Probably a passion project. And it shows.

Let me tell you, this was a surprisingly emotional ride.

Up front I was expecting a very B grade martial arts movie with a acting-wise very limited protagonist. This Bren guy pulled it off though.... There are quite some subtle scenes where you feel the inner turmoil in him.

The story is simple but does not shy away from quite ugly themes. And it kind of even crosses a line in between.

Of course, it revolves pretty much how you expect it, with the main guy virtually having super powers. But that does not detract from the movie.

But the absolute standout quality of this film is the direction of the fight scenes. They are very real, visceral und the physicality of them is conveyed very well. I caught myself twitching with some of the hits.....which is very rare. That is some A grade direction that does stand the comparison with the likes of The Raid 2, Ong Bak or Hong Kong movies.

It also gets surprisingly brutal at the end.

So watch out for this Bren Foster guy! Within martial arts movies, I see a bright future.

A new face in the action circus for me and an extremely likeable one at that. Where has this Bren Foster been all these years?

As a nostalgic caress, there is the cosy fighting school setting, which is the central element in almost every classic Eastern. But here we get more than the 10,000th blockbuster of the same content, and for the astonishing mini-budget of 350,000 Australian dollars. Our leading actor is also the director and attempts the difficult balancing act between martial arts action, thriller and drama. If I now add that this is spread over 125 minutes, most people will wave goodbye. Wait a minute! I don't want to claim that everything is perfectly rounded and that there aren't any long stretches, but overall Life After Fighting works surprisingly well. Potential audiences probably won't need the tragic core story, but it does give the brutal finale in particular a very special emotional depth. Speaking of the finale, wow, 40 minutes of a real martial arts highlight. More films please, Mr Foster!

For an independent Australian film, Life After Fighting does action like nothing seen from the country before. The pacing of the film builds tension like a coiled spring for most of its runtime only to unleash with a truly unexpected fury that's well worth the wait.

There's clear influences from Hong Kong cinema in the care in creating investment in the characters before launching into the truly brutal fight choreography.

This will be known as a future classic of the genre and I can't wait to see where Bren Foster expands his craft next. The final action set piece will be rewatched and talked about for years.

Well after watching the trailer I was not going to bother to watch it as it looked awful .

But I went against my gut feeling and settled down to watch.

I was pretty surprised to be honest, the fight scenes were well choreographed, the acting and story were so so.. The movie how ever did seem to be a little long with scenes that were not needed.

The story was a little bit odd at times and not enough character backgrounds.

But if all you are after is a Friday night action movie with some good fights and a movie that's not bad but not great, then this movie will be up your street and worth watching.

I have now re named bren foster as the Australian Scott Adkins.

If you enjoy Seagal or Van Damme movies of the 80s and 90s, you'll probably enjoy this movie. It has plenty of fight scenes and just enough plot to keep things interesting. I enjoyed it quite a bit, some of the fight sequences do go on a little long. The acting is good and the plot is decent. Is it high art? No, but if you turn off your brain for 2 hours you will have a good time. The main character is an Australian martial arts champion who now runs a martial arts studio. He must fight off waves of bad guys, who are also apparently really good at martial arts. The plot revolves around child traffickers, but it's really about the fight sequences.