At The Movies: Life After Fighting
Life After Fighting is Australia’s opportunity to make its mark on the lucrative martial arts movie scene – and I think it does it pretty well.
Bren Foster (The Last Ship, Deep Blue Sea) is writer, director and plays the lead role of Alex Faulkner, retired martial arts world champion who now runs a martial arts school. Bren is an accomplished martial artist in real life, with black belts in Taekwando, Hapkido, Hwarang-do and Brazilian Jiujitsu. He looks pretty happy and relaxed running the school with the assistance of his off-sider Julie (Annabelle Stephenson, Home & Away, Revenge).
He looks more than interested when the lovely Samantha (Cassie Howarth, Home & Away, The Twelve) comes in to register her son, Terry, for classes. The feelings are obviously mutual when she also decides to sign up for private classes. After one of the classes an obnoxious Victor (Luke Ford, Animal Kingdom) comes into reception, and turns out to be Samantha’s ex-husband who will be paying for Terry’s tuition.
Things get ugly when Victor fronts up one day with a mean-looking thug, threatening Alex.
After Alex teaches Victor’s off-sider a lesson, life settles down until Julie’s young daughters Violet and Lainey don’t come back from the ice-cream parlour next to the training facility. As days pass into weeks, the safety of the two girls looks more and more grim. A chance discovery reveals a child trafficking syndicate which leads to the inevitable confrontation between the gang and the former champion.
The storyline is topical and portraying what is actually going on in the world today – including Australia
The fight scenes are extremely well choreographed, though tended to go on a little too long. Unlike many of the Asian movies of this genre it wasn’t the hero tackling an “army” all at the same time. Having done a lot of martial arts myself, it never ceases to amaze me how these fighters keep getting up and coming back for more, when many of the blows they receive would leave you out cold.
Despite this, you can’t let reality get in the way of good entertainment – and I thought this passed the latter test. It was a good plot and good entertainment with great fight scenes to appease all viewers of martial arts movies.
Movie Review by John Glennie
Available to Buy or Rent from August 21 on Digital SVOD Platforms including Amazon, Apple Store, Foxtel Store, Google Play, YouTube & Fetch TV.
Rating: MA 15+
Running Time: 120 minutes
