Life After Fighting-The best martial arts movie in decades

Bren Foster writes, directs and stars in the best martial arts movie since Enter The Dragon. Life After Fighting is a love letter to martial arts.

While it features a plot revolving around child trafficking and has our lead hero Alex Faulkner kicking an immense amount of ass, the movie ultimately showcases different martial arts and if you were to slow the movie down, it’s essentially a tutorial on different techniques, grapples and how-to’s. Bren Foster has created a lovely letter to martial arts, this is a movie that Bruce Lee would have been proud of as it showcases everything he stood for when teaching the martial arts and showcasing it through his movies.

I loved the side story between Alex and Arrio played by Eddie Arrazola. Arrio is the current world champion in MMA and he doesn’t feel he is taken seriously as he never beat Alex. The two have a huge amount of respect for each other and in this we get the classic Rocky and Apollo, end of Rocky 3 scene, except we get to watch. This scene especially displays the values of respect, honour, perseverance, etiquette and humility. Though the whole movie displays these themes, this scene definitely brought it all into fruition

Life After Fighting features strong performances from the cast. Everyone has really got onboard with Bren 100% and committed their all to make his passion project come to life and deliver the movie he envisioned.

Cassie Howarth gives her all and knocks it out the park as Samantha, the love interest of Bren’s character and the ex of violent, narcissist and all around hateable asshole Viktor (played superbly by Luke Ford who creates a character we want to see strung up) who turns out to be our big bad in the movie.

Arielle Jean Foster delivers an absolutely heartbreaking performance, when her character is kidnapped and is banging on the cages in hope of being discovered and hit a chord. Being a dad myself it triggered me.

Bren of course is a trained actor and a highly accomplished martial artist (that’s putting it lightly, the man is an absolute machine) he never misses a beat in action movies, he has the rare gift of being able to deliver a solid and believable performance followed up with an absolute arsenal of skills behind him, he could dismantle you in seconds. If Australia remake Roadhouse, sign Bren up!

Bren’s stunt team are in major top tier form, the fights are fast and furious and you can see that contact is made during the majority of the hits. It’s on par with the Hong Kong style of fighting and more impressively, nothing is sped up. Bren could literally hit you 8 times before you register you’ve been hit once.

Many comparisons have been to John Wick but listen, John Wick, I love it and the world but this is a martial arts movie. The comparison I give is, Game of Death meets The Raid, this is a high octane, bone breaking-adrenaline ride! Game of Death comparison is the pagoda vibes where he fights different tiers of bad guys. In the finale Bren’s, Alex starts off with takedowns and knockouts and as they come back around and go back at him harder he has to up his game which eventually leads to kills. Some are very very brutal! But….they all have you cheering at the screen.

Verdict

Life After Fighting is the best proper martial arts movie in decades. It showcases techniques without quick cuts or ‘drunken camera shots’ we can clearly see what is happening and tell what martial art is on display. What makes the fights unique is you won’t see the same move done twice, Bren and team have worked relentlessly to ensure we have a variety of fast paced, bare knuckle fight scenes that will have audiences on the edge of their seats and 100% invested.

Coming from a Taekwondo background I loved the movie and found myself reacting to hits and half flinching. This movie is not to be missed! Oh and those with the John Wick comparison, mine would be the difference in budget. This is not a Wick movie and the budget wasn’t the same, support this movie if you want to see more. If you can afford WiFi, you can afford a movie!