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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!

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.

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.

Melodrama. Action. More melodrama. More action. Rinse and repeat. Truth is, this has been the formulaic approach to this genre of film for the last 20 years or so. To make a fight film stand out, to make it POP, there has to be something unusual, something different. And LIFE AFTER FIGHTING 2024 offers that. The melodrama is still ... melodrama. But the action scenes are on fire. In fact, when the action starts, this reviewer gets a vibe not felt since BILLY JACK 1971, the original, and that is high praise. ((Don't forget to check out WARRIOR 2011 and KISS OF THE DRAGON 2001 on my list of all-time greats, if you have not done so already. Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." See my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

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.

The story is well known - the bad guys are bad, the good guy is good - and keeps no real surprises, but the fight scenes are intense and extremely well choreographed.

A little bit too long, well acted drama with good fights for fans.

Bren Foster: Director, Screenplay, Producer, Choreographer of Fight Scenes and main character. Multi talented. Keep an eye on him.

If you love martial arts movies then don't miss this one.

Australian martial arts excellence.

Story is well known - the bad guys are bad, the good guy is good - and keeps no real surprises, but the fight scenes are intense and extremely well choreographed.

A little bit to long, well acted drama with good fights for fans.

Bren Foster: Director, Screenplay, Producer, Choreographer of Fight Scenes and main character. Multi talented. Keep an eye on him.

If you love martial arts movies then don't miss this one.

Alex Faulkner (Bren Foster) is a retired champion MMA fighter who teaches in his dojo. Samantha Hathaway (Cassie Howarth) brings in her son Terry. Terry and another girl go missing. Samantha uncovers a kidnapping and child trafficking ring led by her ex Victor Dimov (Luke Ford).

This starts off great with Bren Foster kicking and fighting. He's definitely skilled in that arena. His acting is nowhere near his fighting skills. To be fair, he is a fine actor for an MMA fighter. He has his limits. The other main actors are pretty good. The story is a little clunky and the filmmaking is a lot clunkier. Mostly, this movie is too long. It can't be over two hours. The long fights start losing their intensity after awhile.

Not that long ago i saw the trailer for this movie and remembered the lead actor from a movie i saw with Steven Seagal call Force of Execution about 10 years ago or so. He was very solid in it in term of fighting but for whatever reason, its like he never really did anything more when it comes to Martial Arts? After watching his IMDB resume it seem he spent lots of years in recurring roles in TV shows so that could explain.

Fast forward many years later and this one finally get release, so i give it a rent on Xbox (i couldn't buy it even if i wanted to for whatever reason, rental only) and this really surprised the heck out of me.

I mean the trailer did showed some good fight sequences but with DTV martial arts flick you never know. But i was actually blown away.

The movie has a rather surprisingly long run time for the genre at 2h, but it want to establish the characters well so you feel for them. It still manage to insert enough fight scenes and training scenes in that first and second act that i never felt bored or that it moved too slow.

Once you get in the third act tough is where the show start. BRUTAL fight scenes, fast pace, great choreographies. I read in some other reviews that there was too much "shaky cams" but i think the guy may have had a few beers too much because i didn't notice much shaky cams at all. Yes sometimes the camera follow the action and its not completely steady but its not "shaky" at all.

Story touch on some hard subject and without reinventing anything, it is solid enough to be a base for the action show.

Bren Foster not only star in it, but also directed and written it, so it was really a passion project for him and he succeeded at making a very good modern day Martial Art movie mixing both old school kicks and flips with a more grounded BJJ style of modern MMA.

Other than Scott Adkins its been pretty dry outside of Asia when it comes to this genre. You got Michael Jai White putting one out here and here, but for some reasons he appears often as a guest star in non-martial art movies (i assume he don't want to be type casted) and when he do put one, they not always exactly great. Some are very low budget and it show.

I don't know how big was the budget for Life After Fighting, but even tough there is nothing extremely expensive in it (explosions, car chases or big action set piece), everything they done especially the climax really look great and its very well directed when it comes to the fights.

If i must mention a negative, i would say Bren Foster altough an amazing on screen fighter, lack a bit in term of acting when it comes to emotions, but then again you don't watch a movie like this for academy award type of actings. It was fine enough.

Overall this is one i will like to add to my physical collection so hopefully i can get at least a DVD at some point. And i do hope Mr Foster make more martial arts movie in the futur.

With a tiny budget of 350 000 Australian dollars Bren Foster managed to create one of the best (if not the best) fight sequences in movie history! A criminally underrated screen fighter, fight choreographer, athlete and martial arts master that holds black belts in 5 disciplines (taekwondo, hapkido, brazilian jiu-jitsu, haidong gumdo, hwarangdo) and world champion gold medals in taekwondo and karate!

What an interesting, original, and well acted beginning ! This movie could've gotten 10 enthusiastic stars, and it's a very enjoyable and unique film for the revenge genre, but ultimately some glaring cliches and too much cognitive dissonance drag it down out of the clouds :( I don't want to tell what happens, so let me just say it ends up the Action movie equivalent of a damsel running from danger who "trips" in the woods (hahaha) I mean damn, really ? Think about what the audience had to buy into to support your hero, and also if it's in like a thousand movies that doesn't mean it's a worthy plot device, all that means is there's a lot of mediocre and/or lazy writers creating content.

I've only seen here someone's desire to display their fighting choreography which is what you'll see a lot in Life After Fighting. What you'll miss is rational behavior of anyone but children in the story. All the adults' actions make to sense. Logical thinking was severely lacking while writing the script of this film.

As an amateur martial artist, I enjoyed a couple of moves shown, but that's about it. Basically, the bad guys attack the hero almost always one by one and never think of use their numbers as an advantage. Just watch the Warrior (2011) or Never Back Down. Don't waste two hours of your time here.

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.

I try to never miss an Australian movie while living in China... so I was happy to watch it... first, I would love to share a story from the time when I was a student... I studied archaeology in Macedonia in the late 70's and in their capital Skopje there was a cinema called Kino Napredok (cinema Progress) that was situated in the Bit Bazaar, the area mainly inhabited by Albanians and Roma people (Gypsies as they call them). In that cinema there were only Western movies, Kung Fu or fighting movies (Bruce Lee was the most popular), Bolywood films and erotic masterpieces like Last Tango in Paris, Emanuelle or anything with naked bodies that is NOT porn! The audience were mostly uneducated bunch of movie lovers that had trouble reading subtitles, and didn't buy popcorn as a snack but will bring their own garlic salami that they will chew while the movie is on with half a kilo fresh bread... I cannot really describe the atmosphere in it... it is more than enthusiastic for EVERY movie in that always packed cinema that started at 9 a.m. And continued until 9 p.m.

Well, this Australian movie was perfect for that cinema... I know it is late for cinema Progress, almost 50 years late, but the audience would appreciate the 2 hours in the cinema that had more than half just in fights... all sorts of fights! The screenplay felt like written by an AI system later revised by human editors and I admit that some good acting and good fighting saved it to be just watchable for me... So, if you are into fights, some good some really bad, try this one... and imagine lots of noisy Roma people cheering the Australian Alex, the main hero, kicking the butts of the Russians, Chinese or whatever those guys were!

Look, the movie started well. Strong martial arts performances by the main character, who surely has done plenty of this, before turning into acting. So, so far so good.

The acting was ok and we can claim solid mixed with interesting dialogues and some, of course, predictable drama, typical of a low budget film. But, at the moment that the heat of the situation kicked in all started to go downhill from there.

Utterly silly decisions made by the characters, improbable of a realistic situation, make the two main actors (him and her) look like the dumbest people on the planet.

How many movies have we seen already where the main role suddenly believes he or she has super powers, and try to rescue or fight a gang of criminals without any help?

Yet, some film directors seem to be convinced that the audience, that would be us, all suffer from mental challenges, and we will consider those actions realistic, plausible and even convincing.

Now, if I were the actor in the main role and upon reading the script I see: "serious film, no sarcasm or comedy, you do this and that" and those acts make me look like a clown in front of my audience, I wonder what I would do...?

Would I take the role? Or tell the Director to go and sell hotdogs outside, as he would probably be better off.

A question that will remain with me.

Except Cannon would have chopped out 30 minutes of character development and story to get to what they knew the audience was watching for - the fight scenes. And they are amazing. Bad guys are CARTOONISHLY evil, and you will notice a distinct tonal shift toward the end of the movie where the action just goes off the rails, (no spoilers but the moment it happens involves some inventive use for a door knob as an improvised weapon) but if you want to see great fight choreography you can do a lot worse than this flick. Those scripts in those old Cannon flicks were just an excuse to get to as many action set pieces as possible and this seems like the route they went with this, at least the end of the film is definitely rigged that way (in a good way, mind you).

Bren Foster delivers a powerhouse performance in "Life After Fighting," a film he wrote, produced, and starred in. "Life After Fighting" is more than just fisticuffs. The story unfolds when two of his students disappear. The deeper the story goes, the more desperate the situation becomes, with more girls discovered in captivity.

Despite the dark subject matter, the film doesn't shy away from emotional moments. The bond between Alex and his students is genuinely touching, and there are moments that will pull at your heartstrings (believe me, I teared up too!).

The fight choreography is exceptional. Be warned, though - some fight scenes are brutally realistic, so be prepared.

Overall: "Life After Fighting" is a must-watch for action fans who appreciate well-done fight choreography and a compelling story. If you're looking for a thrilling ride with a satisfying payoff, "Life After Fighting" delivers.

Life After Fighting is a 2024 Australian action, drama, mystery and thriller film directed by Bren Foster and produced by three companies: Blue Stone Media, Broken Yellow and Spinning Plates. The film's screenplay was also written by Bren Foster and stars artists such as Bren Foster, Casey Howarth, Luke Ford, Annabelle Stephenson, Ariel Jean Foster, Anthony Nassif, Eddie Arrazola, Ethan Brown, Ruby Bustle, Denise Chan, Mike Duncan, Mackenzie Forman, Gillian Foster, Olivia Gilholly, and others. The film Life After the Fight was first released on June 7, 2024, by Vertical Entertainment in theaters in the United States and by Blue Stone Media in theaters in Australia, and then simultaneously released online by Roadshow Entertainment in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Taiwan, Tunisia, Luxembourg, South Africa, Switzerland, Argentina, and other countries; The film Life After the Fight was jointly produced by Elena Arena, Navid Bahadori, Bern Foster, Chelsea Jean Foster, Kiara Giles, and Mario Landway, edited by Paul Black, and shot by Shane Parsons; the film's soundtrack was composed by Jason Fernandez.

The core story about child abduction/sex trafficking was fine. It was engaging enough on its own.

However, there is a side story about our retired main character taking on an up-and-coming new champ in a private fight at his club a la Rocky III. It's an unnecessary diversion from the main plot. I thought there was an opportunity to tie the two stories together, but it never happens.

The final fight scene between our hero and a gang of thugs -- which takes up a good chunk of screen time -- really took me out of the movie.

There's no question that main lead/writer/director Bren Foster has the skills to deliver some flashy and devastating kicks and punches, and grapple on the ground.

But, credulity started to stretch when he fails to take advantage of many opportunities to break limbs while he has his opponent in an arm bar. Rinse and repeat.

Or, he thoroughly drops them to the floor, but fails to follow through to finish them. Instead he simply stands there in a fighting stance as they slowly get up again for another round. Rinse and repeat.

This is a fight to the death, not a cage match with rules to follow.

I was getting bored during the final fight which could have been pared down.

Before I decided to watch Life After Fighting, I read some of the reviews here on the site. I didn't know anything about Bren Foster, so I didn't know what to expect, but I must say, he is awesome, and I am definitely going to watch some of his other movies.

Some reviewers called it a B-movie with fight scenes like an A-movie, and I can only agree. This film truly has some spectacular fight scenes with lots of cool kicks. I also thought the story and acting were pretty decent. Although the characters made some stupid decisions at times, I wasn't bored at any point or to annoyed with it. All in all, a very successful film.

I rarely review movies. Can't even remember how I found this one, but I enjoyed it very much. I myself am a martial arts person. Started when I was 15 and now at 45 years old I kind of feel related to this movie and it's protagonist. This film has heart, and the way Brent Foster impregnates his character with it is special. Makes him look humble and in some way resigned to a life full of nostalgia and sadness.

I'll be looking forward to more Bren Foster's projects in the future.

Great action and choreography. For those having a hard time understanding this film, I believe it was made with the intention of portraying the emptiness that's left after a martial artist is at the end of his prime career and wants to settle down.

Thank you Brent for this movie, I'm sure it was very special to you and for many others that feel related.

Ok action is good and actors did a good job... but the writing and camerawork.... my god so bad. Another review said pointless fightings up to the 40 minute mark, but those were the ones that make sense. When people have conversations the shaky camera is very noticeable you fell like you're on a boat.

The writing though makes no sense. There is a point where the main character was really loud but should if he had any common sense he needed to be quiet. There is another side character who clearly has a concussion but the lack of caring when a retired fighter should CLEARLY know the dangers of CT. The bad decision making is absurd on the latter half of the movie.

At one point I was going to have a completely different review, calling all the negative reviewers crazy, well some still are and should probably be probed by the feds, considering the subject matter.

That being said, as others have stated, the movie starts out strong, but then turns into a martial arts melodrama. I'm still not going to have a negative view of it, as the fight scenes are excellent and when I'm watching a movie like this, that's really all I want. The acting was reasonable, the idea was great, the execution not so much. The subject matter is something thats been a fairly big and important topic as of late, that needs more attention, hence why I think some of the negative reviews are highly questionable...The movie does need better editing, the film quality seemed a little on the low budget side, but still an enjoyable flick with a message for the pdf files out there.

So... Not a bad start. I was interested. And then the fighting started... And after that it was just fighting - lots of fighting - and after the fighting more fighting. Lots and lots of kicks. Many of them fancy. Lots of chopping. And then more kicks. And it was amazing because the main character was so principled. He seemed utterly committed to fight only with his bare hands. Guns and knives were left behind... Anything really that could help him. This guy didn't want them! And it wasn't just him that was amazing. Seriously, some of the guys he fought against were crazy good too! One of them kept fighting even after every one of his limbs was broken. It was crazy amazing in a weird kind of way. Wow! So what I am trying to say is this: this was, all in all, one of the most unrealistic (maybe ridiculous) movies I have seen with more nonstop fighting than probably any other movie ever. Have you ever eaten too much? Like way too much? That's how this makes you feel... sooooo much fighting ... But it just keeps on going. So should you watch it? I don't know. It will definitely amuse you, though it doesn't mean to. But if you want anything resembling realism find something else - anything else.