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LIFE AFTER FIGHTING is an independent action film set to be released in 2024. The movie’s lead actor, who also served as the writer, director, and choreographer, is Australian martial artist Bren Foster. Bren even wrote a few of the songs on the movie’s soundtrack. Impressive, right? It seems like a self-indulgent project, which I wouldn’t necessarily mind, but if by “vanity project” it is intended that someone who isn’t really good or has no actual talent tries to showcase unwanted skills, this isn’t that. This man is a bona fide talent and the movie is pretty good, staying true to the fundamentals of the genre, and at times even elevating them slightly. I’m happy to admit I loved it.
Foster is close to my age and has been on screen since a bit part in the crazy made-for-TNT kung fu movie INVINCIBLE in 2001. More recently I’ve heard he was good as the villain in DEEP BLUE SEA 3 and as Max in the Mad Max video game. I knew the name was familiar and sure enough, I first encountered him as one of the younger co-stars who takes on most of the fighting in a couple of the later Seagal movies. I didn’t mention him in my MAXIMUM CONVICTION review, but in FORCE OF EXECUTION, I noted that he’s basically the main character even though on the cover he’s only seen as a tiny reflection in one lens of Seagal’s sunglasses. I praised his fighting but wrote that “when he’s talking instead of kicking ass he lacks the charisma to be captivating. Maybe it’s partly because he fakes an American accent. Shoulda gone full Van Damme and not worried about it.” Here he does in fact get to use his real accent, but also I think he’s just more comfortable in something coming from his heart.
He portrays Alex Faulkner, as a kind and gentle man who is liked by everyone, especially children. The community has taken a liking to him at the school where he teaches taekwondo, Brazilian jiujitsu wrestling and other martial arts to all ages. No one is perfect. I mean everyone has a ‘skeleton in their closet’. His secret is that he did not put enough effort into the championship fight, which he lost before retiring from mixed martial arts and then he did not try to keep his wife because she was not what he wanted. She did love him, but children to her meant so much and he could not have those because of his spinal surgeries. Also, sometimes when he is forced to fight, he goes a bit too far. But those things are so minor when it comes to movie protagonist flaws that I think that is kind of refreshing. There are dumber things a man trying to prove that he can act would write for himself. He gets to cry and goes to some dark bits for reasons other than that.
The tale starts off unassuming and relatively simple, depicting the life of Alex as a teacher during which he seems to get involved in a feel-good love story when Sam (Cassie Howarth, 2 GRAVES IN THE DESERT) arrives for class with her young son, Terry (Anthony Nassif), and he decides to break his non-fraternization rules for dinner with her. However, several different conflicts arise.
- The reigning world champion, Arrio Gomez (Eddie Arrazola, 5 episodes of The Last Ship), is in Australia and continues to share videos claiming that Alex is too afraid of him.
- Sam’s ex-husband Victor (Luke Ford, the son in THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR!) is being controlled and shows up to the school with a large, brutish henchman (stuntman Mike Duncan), which results in Alex getting into a fight with him on the school’s lawn.
- Two men in black clothing sit in attendance at a white belt class, engaging in boxing, then try to bait Alex into using his ‘silly’ martial art against their militaristic approach. This is the best of kung fu movies. My favourite part.
As I’m trying to discern if there are subplots or rather single plots, a person in a van makes an appearance and abducts two young girls from the school parking lot. It then takes a turn to serious drama portraying Alex’s efforts to help his mentally distressed employee Julie (Annabelle Stephenson, ESCAPE ROOM [2017] who thinks her daughter (Arielle Jean Foster) is dead, and is unable to communicate, as her husband is away on a secret military exercise. Maybe it’s just me, but in my opinion, there is a certain level of tension when Julie believes there has been some form of retaliation from Alex because of some recent arguing, and it leads Alex to worry. The scene becomes uncomfortable and for a moment, shifts genres, but eventually, he has to deal with the antagonists of the messed up crime thriller part in the type of balls-out extended fight fest that all fight movies deserve, but usually don’t have the time nor the energy to partake in.
While going over THE LAST KUMITE yesterday, I realized that the film, alongside its components, had no uniqueness to offer. However, LIFE AFTER FIGHTING does an exceptional job of avoiding their mistake. The film manages to convey certain elements of its genre in a particular fashion that is seldom seen. For instance, the supporting cast puts forth an exaggerated ‘Lifetime’ movie-style performance. And these are just a couple of new elements that bring style to the production. For me, the highlight was the martial arts montage sequel where Alex is shown teaching choke holds, knife and gun disarming techniques, stick fighting, and much more. The fact that he performs every one of those skills in the grand final battle is great on its own, but the cherry on top is that I’m quite positive he uses them in the same order he practised them!
An interesting twist includes scenes with the current champ that did not make any sense to me.
When that comes up you have no choice but to assume that this movie is about Alex coming out of retirement only to get himself together in a championship fight, correct? But that only seems to be the case for a certain portion of the movie, and it is actually more interesting than that, and reminds me a bit of the Balboa/Creed relationship around ROCKY III. (spoiler?) Arrio appears at the school and doesn’t try to intimidate him, instead, he politely asks to observe a lesson, adding that he hasn’t proven anything yet because he hasn’t defeated the best there is out there. Alex’s reasoning is head and shoulders above the rest. He says that beating the ex-champ, who is a has-been and way past his prime, would mean nothing and losing to him would be the ultimate embarrassment. And then they have a long drawn out pitched battle, but in private. The scene is more focused on revealing Alex’s character rather than providing him with some set-up for dramatic conflict but it also serves another purpose. It puts us into a warm-up fight in the middle, which is more exciting than some movies’ climactic fights.
If you watch the film closely, you’ll also notice how ‘normal’ people including civilians and children are startled by violence being portrayed and there being no sympathy for it. For instance, Alex turns into a BILLY JACK figure where he avoids fighting but ends up beating the bully for good reason. However, he does notice a child and his mother staring at him with disappointment which makes him feel guilty. now, at a different point in the movie, he is forcibly challenged by the military guys. We keep seeing the students and school staff and all seem to be frightened and feeling sick because of how many students there are. They expect and hope to see martial arts practice, not aggression and furore. People here aren’t some tough guys who want to hurt each other.
Is it me or does the plot seem slightly anti-modern military? We have come to expect from both action flicks and real life that a soldier becomes a mercenary in some conflict-ridden country. But this is on a whole new level they are abducting young girls and selling them off! Formerly honourable soldiers are trying to kill people for this enterprise while claiming to be professionals. And then there’s the scene at the end with Julie’s husband, a current soldier who actually isn’t a scumbag, and interestingly the movie kind of shames him for being away on duty when he should have been taking care of his family.
I don’t think Foster makes an important point there, but, it is quite bold of him to create a film with such a stark contrast between a martial artist and a warrior. The title is quite unusual and for some reason, it didn’t appeal to me initially, but I changed my mind once I realized that this set his life after sports to that of the villains’ life after the fight.
There are two minuses I could identify about the film and both of them are minor in nature. One is how the storytelling, which flows smoothly and confidently, does become somewhat clunky in the middle, more so with the titles which appear and say “one week later,” “two weeks later,” and then “three weeks later.” Out of context, do they each mean one week later? My other concern revolves around all the build-up anticipation of Alex Jr. fighting Ethan (Masa Yamaguchi, THE CONDEMNED), one of the soldiers who appear in the school. This man has plenty of malevolence in his face, he’s squaring up like he’s ready to duel in THE RAID 2, but escapes at the sight of some police. Later on, when he returns with a lot of other guys, Victor is holding him back like a bouncer controlling a known troublemaker, which allows him to massively inflate our expectations of his fighting abilities.
In the end, Victor commands Ethan to take action, to which he responds with “It’s about damn time”, and he is finally able to go up against Alex, but he has a mask on the entire time. That made me think that they probably cast someone who could hatefully sneer but didn’t have the ability for the fight sequences But then I found out that he was a stuntman in THE WOLVERINE, GHOST IN THE SHELL, SHANG-CHI, and FURIOSA. So maybe they really are just sticking to the plot logic that they are attempting to disguise themselves from the security cameras. That’s beside the point, I was expecting something entirely different witnessing that guy’s reaction when he gets defeated.
What might throw you off is the running time, which is only one minute shorter than DAWN OF THE DEAD’s length. It would’ve benefited from a tighter edit, but I feel it earns most of it. It is, after all, more peculiar, packed with more emotion, and far more ambitious than its counterparts, doing some genuine non-action dread in the most stretched-out scene, non-action sequence, and while subverting norms of action, It puts a lot of effort on its non-dry scenes. If you ever find yourself glancing at the clock in disbelief, “Wait, there’s over 40 minutes left?” you can calm down because the remaining 40 minutes are just non-stop Alex vs a lot of extremely unlikable weaklings that deserve to die battle. It’s set entirely within the school but shifts between different classrooms and hallways. He utilizes various weapons and tactics, smashing people through walls, cabinets, and windows, self-sacrificing and wreaking havoc on his own property, as some kills are surprisingly violent (spoiler alert: possibly the only film where someone gets stabbed with a doorknob), all in all, it is a good time.
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