LIFE AFTER FIGHTING is a 2024 indie action movie starring, written, directed, and choreographed by Australian martial artist Bren Foster. He even has writing credits on some of the songs on the soundtrack. That sounds like a vanity project, which I wouldn’t necessarily be against, but if “vanity project” is someone forcing their way onto the screen when they don’t really belong there, this is not that. This guy is a natural, and it’s a good movie, delivering well within the traditions of the genre and occasionally even transcending them a little. I kinda 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 plays Alex Faulkner, a handsome and sweet man, good with kids, beloved by the community he’s built around him at the school where he teaches taekwondo, Brazilian jiujitsu and other martial arts to people of all ages. He’s not perfect. His dark secret is that he didn’t try hard enough in the championship fight he lost before retiring, and then he left his wife even though he still loved her because she wanted kids and he couldn’t have them due to spinal surgeries. Also, sometimes he goes a little overboard when pushed into a fight. But those things are so minor when it comes to movie protagonist flaws that he kind of seems like an idealized hunk in a romance movie, and I think that’s kind of refreshing. He gets to cry and go to some dark places for different reasons than the usual ones a guy trying to prove he has dramatic chops would write for himself.

The story begins very low key and down to earth, showing Alex’s daily life as a teacher, getting into a sweet romance story when Sam (Cassie Howarth, 2 GRAVES IN THE DESERT) comes in for lessons with her little son Terry (Anthony Nassif) and he decides to break his personal non-fraternization rule to have dinner with her. But a couple different conflicts come up:

1. The current world champion Arrio Gomez (Eddie Arrazola, 5 episodes of The Last Ship) is in Australia and keeps posting videos saying Alex is too scared to fight him

2. Sam’s ex-husband Victor (Luke Ford, the son in THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR!) is being a possessive douche, and shows up at the school with a burly henchman (stuntman Mike Duncan) who Alex ends up fighting on the lawn

3. Two guys dressed in black sit in during a white belt class, start punching people, and try to get Alex to pit his silly martial arts against their military style. Classic kung fu movie shit. I love it.

And while I’m trying to figure out which of these are subplots and which one is what the movie is gonna be about, suddenly an unseen person in a van snatches up two little girls from the school’s parking lot, and it becomes a serious drama about Alex trying to support his trusted employee Julie (Annabelle Stephenson, ESCAPE ROOM [2017]) who’s freaking out because her daughter (Arielle Jean Foster) might be dead and she can’t even tell her husband because he’s away on a secret military exercise. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I felt great tension that Julie might blame Alex, suspecting this is retaliation for one of his recent squabbles, and that Alex either feels that way himself or worries that she does. It gets very uncomfortable and it pretty much switches genres for a while, but eventually he faces the villains of the fucked up crime thriller section in the type of balls-out extended fight fest all fight movies deserve but often don’t have the schedule or elbow grease to provide.

Yesterday when I reviewed THE LAST KUMITE I admitted that it didn’t really add any flavor to the traditional elements of its subgenre. LIFE AFTER FIGHTING doesn’t have that problem at all. It puts its genre elements together in an idiosyncratic way, oddly butting them up against parts that seem like a Lifetime movie and overachieving dramatic performances from some of the supporting players. And there are so many little touches that give it personality. I found it really thrilling that during the many martial arts lesson montages we see Alex teaching people how to do choke holds, how to disarm an attacker with a knife, how to disarm an attacker with a gun, and we see him practicing stick fighting, and not only does he utilize every one of those skills in the big fight, but I’m pretty sure he does them in the same order he practiced them in!

One of the unexpected turns involves the business with the current champ. When that comes up you have no choice but to assume that this movie is about Alex coming out of retirement to redeem himself in a championship fight, right? But it turns out to be just a subplot that’s resolved in an interesting way that reminds me of the Balboa/Creed relationship circa ROCKY III. (spoiler?) Arrio shows up at the school but doesn’t threaten him, just respectfully asks to sit in for a class, explains that he doesn’t feel he’s proven himself because he hasn’t beaten the best. Alex very sensibly explains that beating the out-of-practice, past-his-prime ex-champ would mean nothing, while losing to him would be humiliating. So they end up having a long, pitched battle, but in private. The scene is more about explaining Alex’s character than setting him up for any dramatic conflict later, but also it gives us a warm up fight in the middle that’s better than the climactic fight in some movies.

(If they manage to make a sequel I sure hope they bring back Arrio as an ally, like Dae Han in BEST OF THE BEST 2.)

There’s also a bit of a Peckinpah touch in that it often cuts to normal people watching and being horrified by the violence. For example, Alex has a BILLY JACK moment where he tries to avoid a fight, then gives in and deservingly whoops a bully’s ass. But then he turns and sees a young student and his mother watching, upset, and he seems ashamed about it. Later, when he’s similarly pushed into a challenge from the military guys, we keep seeing reactions from students and employees of the school, and most of them seem scared and disgusted. They come here for respectful martial arts, not actual animosity and violence. Not macho dudes trying to hurt each other.

And is it my imagination or does the story come of a little anti-military? We’re used to the action movie (and real life) trope that soldiers leave the military and get paid to be even more amoral as mercenaries. But this takes it to a crazy level – they’re kidnapping little girls and auctioning them off! They have once respectable soldiers trying to kill people on behalf of this enterprise, considering themselves professionals. And then at the end there’s a scene with Julie’s husband, a current military guy who is not a scumbag, but the movie kinda shames him about being away on duty when he was needed by his family.

I don’t think Foster intends a big statement there, but it’s kinda ballsy to make a movie that shows a difference between a martial artist and a warrior. The title sounds a little clunky to me but I liked it better when I realized it’s contrasting his life after sports to the villains’ life after combat.

I can say two negative things about the movie, both minor. One is that the smooth and confident storytelling gives way to some clunkiness in the middle, particularly in the use of titles saying “one week later,” “two weeks later” and then “three weeks later” that, in context, seem to each mean one week later? The other has to do with all the anticipation they build for Alex to fight Ethan (Masa Yamaguchi, THE CONDEMNED), one of the soldiers who show up at the school. He has so much malevolence in his face, he’s squaring up THE RAID 2 style for a duel, but runs away when the cops are called. And then when he returns with a bunch of other guys, Victor holds him back as his personal bodyguard, further delaying the showdown and amplifying our expectations for his fighting abilities.

Eventually Victor sends Ethan to attack, and he’s like it’s about fuckin time, and he finally pits his skills against Alex, but wears a mask the whole time. That made me assume they found an actor with the right hateful scowl but that wouldn’t be able to do the fight scenes… but then I looked him up and found out he was a stuntman in THE WOLVERINE, GHOST IN THE SHELL, SHANG-CHI and FURIOSA. So maybe they’re really just sticking to the plot logic that they’re trying to hide their faces from security cameras. Anyway, that was one of the only things I felt was missing – seeing that guy’s face when he loses.

You may also be intimidated by the length, since it’s only 1 minute shorter than DAWN OF THE DEAD. It could be tightened, but I think it mostly earns it – it’s weirder, more emotional, more ambitious than most movies of its type, creates some real dread in the most drawn out non-action sequence, and pushes the envelope on the action. If you get to a point where you look at the time and think “oh wow, there’s still 40 minutes left?” that’s okay, because the remaining 40 minutes are a relentless Alex vs. many horrible people who deserve to die battle. It’s all inside the school but it moves around to different rooms, he uses different weapons and methods, smashes people through walls and cabinets and windows (he self sacrifices in the amount of damage he causes to his own property), there are a couple surprisingly brutal kills to liven things up (spoiler: possibly the only movie where someone gets THE-RAID-stabbed with a door knob), it’s just an all around good time.

LIFE AFTER FIGHTING isn’t a reinvention of the form, but it’s an exciting new rendition of it, and a real “oh shit, I better pay attention to this guy” moment for Bren Foster. Congratulations, Australia.

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I first learned about LIFE AFTER FIGHTING from Charles (@The8thCurse), who gives me lots of good tips on Twitter, and many others of the VOD faithful have been singing its praises as well. I thank them for their service.