BIG BAD FILM

Passion. It’s an overused term when describing the people that put it all on the line crafting a scrappy indie film. Listen to Bren Foster speak for just five minutes, though, and you’ll be ready to leap into battle and kick some serious ass. 

Beneath the actor, writer, director AND martial arts expert’s laidback, Aussie charm, is a man who lives and breathes his craft. Well, his many crafts. The multi-hyphenate is a familiar face to action fans, be it as a regular contributor to National Geographic’s television series Fight Science, fan favorite on TNT’s The Last Ship or stealing the show as the villainous Lucas in the secretly great Deep Blue Sea 3. A guy with strong acting chops, chiseled out of marble and who can throw a spin kick as well as Scott Adkins, Foster is made in the exact mold die hard action fans will follow anywhere while shouting from the mountains that he should be in everything. Thankfully for us, Foster didn’t sit around waiting for Hollywood to do their job, instead committing his passions to the absolute face melter that is Life After Fighting. 

As Alex Faulkner, Foster is a former martial arts  champion turned teacher whose fighting days are behind him. If not content, he’s at least finding his peace in passing on his gifts and knowledge to younger generations. As these things seem to go for mild-mannered badasses, Faulkner’s world is torn apart when two of his students are abducted by child traffickers. Part drama, part action spectacle, Life After Fighting is a terrific slow burn that lets loose one of the wildest and most brutal final 45 minutes you’ll ever see as Faulkner tears through these monsters to find his students. 

A black belt in taekwondo, hwarangdo, hapkido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Foster takes this world deathly seriously. When he’s not playing a teacher onscreen, he’s doing the work in real life, ensuring the arts live on beyond him at his dojo (playing itself in the film). In Life After Fighting, you don’t just feel the fury of a man at the end of his rope trying to save innocents. You feel the blood, sweat and tears of a filmmaker who took a lifetime of passion for this world and the films within and said “Hey, I can do this just as well as you. Watch this.” Some action showcases act as a calling card, an appetizer of what its star can do. Life After Fighting is a five course meal full of the finest gourmet any action fan would be lucky to sample. 

Ahead of its screening at last year’s Big Bad Film Festival, Bren Foster sat down with writer Brandon Streussnig for a spirited, passionate discussion about his film, his influences, what it means to him to share his gifts and the power top notch martial arts evokes  on screen. 

Brandon Streussnig: Life After Fighting emphasizes the script as much as the action. How important was it for you to balance both and keep them on the same level?

Bren Foster: Well, firstly, thank you for pointing that out, Brandon. In Australia, we do drama very well, and I've been in the industry for quite some time, but when I first got to the States, I did the National Geographic martial arts studies (Fight Science) and whatnot, but a lot of people don't know that I went to university to study for three years as an actor and then continued my acting training through a lot of the jobs that I did. I was on Days of Our Lives, I did a lot of dramas, sci-fi. So I was very much a classically trained actor, and I never really chased the martial arts path. I guess just to be truthful, sometimes I felt... And not always, but a lot of the action movies lacked a little bit of story, a little bit of character development. There's a lot of this false bravado and face-pulling and tough guy stuff. And that's great, too. I mean, that's a lot of fun to watch sometimes.

But I really wanted to bring the two together. I really wanted to try to bring character development, story, and action to the highest level and see if we could marry them together. And our mantra is high drama, high action. And in Australia, that's what we intend to do as we move forward. So I think just even mentioning that to me, Brandon, I feel like that's, for me, I take that as a compliment because you noticed it. We’re getting a lot of praise for the final 30, 40 minutes of the movie. And look, we killed ourselves doing it. We really did. And I absolutely love it, and it's a favorite part of the movie for me, too. But at the same time, we really rehearsed, we spent time with the actors, and each and every actor in that movie really invested themselves. Even from the children, like the little girl in the cage. She gave her heart and soul to that. And in that moment when she breaks down in the cage, the whole crew was crying. Annabel Stephenson really embodied losing her child and having to search for her and not knowing where to go. Same with Cassie (Howarth) and Luke (Ford). Every actor really came and gave a hundred percent and invested. 

BS: It reminded me most of the old school Hong Kong movies, particularly a guy like Johnnie To, where there was just as much emphasis on the melodrama as there was the action. I watch a ton of these indie action movies, and so many of them are action showcases, which is great, but the script often feels like an afterthought, I think it’s exciting to discover something like this where that’s not at all the case. You wrote, directed, and starred in this. Was directing something that you had any interest in prior? Was it something that you had always seen yourself doing down the line?

BF: No, no, I'm just going to be completely honest. I spoke to some close friends and writing (Life After Fighting) was intended, obviously, as was playing the lead. But the further I got into it with some friends who were well-known DPs and directors, they started pushing it back to me, saying, "You need to direct this. No one else can quite see it the way you can. No one else is going to have a deep understanding of what it's like inside a martial arts school and what it's like to be a former combat athlete. It has to be you."

There was a little bit of resistance. When I say resistance, I don't know if that was fear; I don't know what it was, but I was reluctant to do it. But then I just said, "You know what?" It kind of landed on me. I remember waking up one day and thinking, "They're right; I need to do this." And I did. And I didn't look back.

I was used to working with actors because I was also an acting teacher. So I've got a good method, and I believe I can communicate what I want through performance when I'm working with actors, whether we are working with American playwrights in scene study class or whatnot. So, that wasn't really my biggest fear. I think my biggest fear was understanding and ensuring that I get the right shots and the right angles and everything. But through the relationship I had with our DP, Shane Parsons, it became quite apparent that I really wanted certain things, and he was able to deliver on them. It just seemed to all fall into place.

BS: Do you see yourself directing more? Is it something that excites you?

BF: I think right now, and I'm going to be careful because I really don't want it to come across as coming from a place of ego, but because I'm writing the scripts and especially for our next one, and because of the martial arts action… I want to step in and direct again because it was very much a learning curve for me, understanding what I wanted. And sometimes, the people around me couldn't see it, but I always knew in my head it was going to work. And I always knew that this is the way it's going to pan out. And sometimes, they couldn't see it, and I would explain it to them, but they still couldn't see it. But then when they saw the film, they was like, "Oh my God, that worked so much better than I thought it would." And I was like, "I told you so."

BS: I don't think that comes from a place of ego at all because there are very few people in the world who can do what you do on screen. So if not you, then who? You know, especially if you’re also writing.

BF: Yeah, Yeah. Like that man behind you, (Foster points to a poster of Cobra), he's an absolute legend in my mind. I mean, Sylvester Stallone is in another world in terms of performers, actors, and action stars. He's in the top three favorites of mine. And I looked at what he did. No one really lifted him or gave him the shot that he deserved. He wrote it, he stuck to his guns. He moved into many more features, which he wrote, directed and starred in. So, the path has been forged before. And I mean, obviously, Sylvester Stallone is a legend, and it's at the highest level possible. But to look at someone like him, who's a hero of mine, and see what he did, it's very inspiring for me to write, act, and direct in my jobs, too. 

BS: It's one thing to direct yourself strictly acting, but what were the challenges of directing yourself and others performing these intricate fight scenes while knowing in your mind that you're also the director? Did you find that it was easier to perform those as director, or were you constantly having a dual dialogue going in your head? Because you're kind of wearing two hats at the same time while fighting. It's wild.

BF: I'm not going to lie, it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. We would do these fight scenes, and we spent a lot of time prepping and training at my martial arts school with my own stunt team. The beauty about it was that in other jobs, there were always parameters and restrictions and people you had to work with, whether it was a stunt coordinator or director, and you had to navigate around and try to keep everyone happy. I was totally free and uninhibited to just do what I wanted this time, which I think contributed to the result that we got. But as I said, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I would be completely exhausted, and we'd be going through these fight scenes and then suddenly I'd run back behind the monitor, see it, "Oh, we didn't get it. Oh, the camera didn't move here, just in time. All right, let's go again."

I remember one of our stunt guys, Jordan, he's a young guy, but he got so tired he had to go to the toilet and vomit because he was exhausted. And I'm tired too, and I'm exhausted as well, but I'm like, I have to be the one to say, "All right, come on you. All right, have a Gatorade. Are you good? You ready to go again?" "Yep." "Okay,” fist bump, “let's do it." So, at the same time as doing the action myself, running behind the monitors coming back, it's also ensuring everyone is motivated and everyone's cared for, checking in to see they're okay and willing to go again.

It was just such a huge machine, for lack of a better term, that we just had to keep well-oiled in every place and keep it moving forward. So yeah, it was one of the absolute hardest things I've ever done. I tore my hamstring, I tore my hip. We had to take a break, we had to come back. But at the end of the day, I'm really happy with what we got, and I think all the stunt guys and our stunt team are just over the moon with it as well.

BS: You spent quite a bit of time in the US, and now you're back in Australia making independent action. I think that for a lot of people in the States when we think of Australian action, our minds immediately go to George Miller and his films. Beyond him, though, what’s the scene like over there? Is that part of a plan, to try to diversify Australian action a little bit? 

BF: Yeah, gosh, look, in Australia, we do drama very, very well, and we've got a lot of great committed actors. And outside of George Miller and Mad Max and the action, which is different from our action, I must say, Australia is not known for it. Australia doesn't do it. I think a long time ago, there was a movie called The Man from Hong Kong, which may have been in the seventies, but other than that, I'm not sure there have been any notable Australian action martial arts films. Of course, George Miller, that's the top of the food chain but they don't necessarily deliver upon the martial arts prowess that we were able to deliver.

 I love the United States. I loved my time there and myself and my wife and my children, we lived there for a good chunk of time, and we may return someday. Not sure when, but right now, I think the projects in Australia and the plans for Australia and this niche that we are carving out for ourselves here with the high drama, high action, I think that that's for the next foreseeable future. That's where we'll be.

BS: You mentioned your martial arts prowess, and among action fans, you're known for just how prolific you are. You're a black belt in multiple disciplines. What inspired you to take that up? Was that something you had always been interested in? Who were some of the people who inspired you?

BF: I'll go back to a little suburb when I was a little kid. I remember I was five, and all the kids were a little bit older than me, so they all started going to the local karate class, but the sensei wouldn't take me until I was six. So the minute I turned six, I was straight in that class, and I loved every minute of it, and I took it to it like a fish to water. He actually nicknamed me the “Thrashing Machine,” and I never knew why. I used to say to my mom, "Why does he call me that?" So my mom asked him, and he explained to me, "It's because you're always finished before everyone else. You're faster than everyone else. You would finish the techniques, and everyone would still be going." So it was a good thing, but I didn't know it at the time. So that was the beginning of my martial arts journey, and I credit that to my mother; God bless her soul. She started me, and she was adamant that I continue training because I have ventured across many different styles.

I was obsessed with Bruce Lee, absolutely obsessed with him in the beginning. My favorite movie is Way of the Dragon, the one where he fights Chuck Norris. I mean, I do like Fist of Fury, I do like Enter the Dragon, the Big Boss. I love those movies, but I absolutely adored Way of the Dragon. I still watch that last fight when he faces off against Chuck Norris, I love it. And even outside, when he fights Bob Wall and the other Korean fighters, I love that too. There was just something a little more, just something in Bruce that I looked at, and I was just completely enamored by him.

Then, obviously, my scope widened, and I started looking at a lot of Jackie Chan stuff. Absolutely love Jackie Chan, although he's got that comedic element. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I think he's a very underrated martial artist. I think he's exceptionally good, and the athletic ability that he has, people would say, "Oh, he's the funny guy.." But his martial arts ability is just exceptional, absolutely exceptional as a martial artist. Take away the funny stuff, take away all the movies, him as a martial artist, combat athlete, wherever you would want to picture him, he's just phenomenal. So I really liked Jackie Chan's stuff.

I was heavily influenced by Asian cinema with the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest. I watched everything. I watched all the Bruce Lee, let's not call them impersonators, but similar types of people trying to emulate Bruce Lee like Bruce Li and Bruce Le. I came across all the movies, all the Shaolin movies, the 36 Chambers. Jet, Li's Once Upon a Time in China. I watched everything.

Everything changed a little bit when Van Damme came in, and I was a kid. I watched Bloodsport, and I was like, "Oh my God." And we all got affected by it; we were all working on our splits (laughs), which was great because I wasn't quite working on my splits that much, but when I saw Van Damme do it, I was like, "Well, I’ve got to make sure I've got my full splits," which I still work on to this very day. And just the technique, let's be honest. His technique was wonderful. I mean, beautiful sidekicks, beautiful turn kicks. That dynamic tension at the end of the kicks, the jumping, the spinning kicks, the back kicks. He was very cinematic. And we all started seeing if we could hold our legs out there with the sidekicks, the turn kicks. We wanted that clean, crisp technique that Van Damme had.

As time went on, Tony Jaa came in and made quite an impact. And then for me, The Raid movies were just different. Everything with the Chinese movies was very clean and crisp in the choreography. When The Raid hit, we saw brutality, it wasn't as clean, it wasn't as crisp. It was messy, and I was just enamored by it. I was so taken,especially by part two. They’re something I'll go back to and watch over and over and over again.

So they were predominantly my major influences. Apart from the never-ending quest for more knowledge and the constant training week after week of my own discoveries and journeys as an artist, I think they all kind of bind together and seamlessly integrate. And I think it's different for every person, but for me, that's all my cinematic martial arts influences in a nutshell, mate.

BS: When you talk about martial arts, you can feel your passion, and then on screen, you can see it. The school that you actually run in real life is a prominent location in the film. And then you also play a teacher in the film, Alex, who is spreading the knowledge of martial arts to younger generations. Is that something that's a driving motivator for you? Is teaching something that excites you?

BF: Absolutely. I think martial arts are invaluable for humans, whether children or adults. I don't think you could put a price on allowing a good martial arts instructor into your life. My martial arts school is large. It's big. We have three different floors. So we have a lot of classes that run there every week, and we have a lot of lovely students, families, and whole families train with us.

So there is an important part of me that as much as I love film and television, and even being an actor away from the martial arts and doing other jobs too, that had nothing to do with martial arts, martial arts is very much a part of my life. It's very much a part of who I am, and it's very much a part of what I love to give to other people, and in the hope that it influences their lives, gives them the ability to protect themselves, gives them the ability to look after their health.

I see the changes in children. I see the changes in adults: their confidence, the way their body changes, the way they hold themselves, and so on. And just the only thing they have to do is genuinely commit to their training. It's the investment in themselves. And when I see that, none of us are going to live forever, but I hope that when I pass on, and my children are carrying on the martial arts legacy that I leave behind, that I can look back from wherever I am at that time and just say, "Hey, I left some good stuff behind. I was able to share, I was able to give, I was able to influence lives in the best possible way that I could do at the time."

BS: You talked about The Raid movies, and I think what's so exciting about this film is that the first couple of fights you see are gentlemen's fights, not too brutal. But then, as the movie escalates, it gets so brutal as it goes along, and it's exciting to watch that sort of unfold. Alongside The Raid, were there other movies that you were looking at when crafting the fights in this movie? What were some of the guideposts?

BF: Other than The Raid or Bruce’s fight with Norris, I really liked Merantau. Another that always had an effect on me was when Jackie Chan fought Benny the Jet in Wheels on Meals.

BS: Oh man, that’s my favorite Jackie fight.

BF: That was badass. That was one of the things I realized when I looked at that fight: how good Jackie was. Yeah, so that fight was always swimming around in my head. Now, I wanted to take all of that and think about how it made me feel. I'll never forget when I was at the Arclight Cinema and I went there to watch The Raid because I watched the trailer and I was like, "I have to see this."

So I went to the cinema, and I'll never forget it. We had people cheering and clapping during the movie, and I remember my heart pumping watching the movie. I'll never forget the feeling that I got from it, and just the people and the reactions. And it was probably one of the most, I don't know what the right word or the right description for that is, how to articulate it, but it was a very meaningful time in my life, just to experience that with a martial arts movie.

Fast-forward to my movie at our premiere, well, premieres because we had a number of them. We had one in Melbourne and one in Sydney, and it was mind-boggling that the same thing happened. People were cheering and screaming. I'll never forget, at the Orpheum, which is a really cool retro cinema, it wasn't our official premiere; it was a special event, still a red-carpet event, but people could actually buy tickets. So they had to move us into the 800-seat cinema because we sold out, literally. And people were just still trying to buy tickets.

There's a moment when Alex is on the floor, and the bad guy's on the floor, and some guy just absolutely loses his nut and starts screaming, "Get up, Alex, get up!" That's on that side of the cinema. And then suddenly, someone on the other side of the cinema starts screaming, "Get up, get up." And then I'm looking over there, and then someone down the front is screaming, "Get up!"

So, in three different directions, someone is just screaming at your character to get to his feet and keep fighting. And then, when he gets to his feet, the whole audience starts applauding. And Brandon, it was real. I was just sitting there thinking, "Wow. Wow." And he gets up, and he's fighting, and then when he kills him, the whole cinema just erupts in applause.

I saw that happen when I watched The Raid at the Arclight Cinema, and then years later, to have that same thing happen to my film was such a compliment. And even when I think about it now, I get almost a little emotional, a little happy, just a little excited, but it's probably something I will remember for the rest of my life. And I will never, ever forget it. Just like I will never forget the way I felt when I first watched The Raid in the cinema. I will never forget the response that we got at the Orpheum. 

BS: I totally get that response because I caught this movie at home. I bought it on VOD, and I was blown away and up on my fight by the end in my living room! There's a small group of us out there, but we're loud, who will watch anything with Scott Adkins, Michael Jai White, Daniel Bernhardt, you, those kinds of guys. The minute I saw your movie, I was telling all of them. I was like, "You guys have to see this." 

That same group of fans that I'm talking about, we get a little... pissed off might be the wrong word, but I feel like there's this running thread where it's like, we watch this stuff and we're like, "This kind of action's better than anything Hollywood's doing right now. Where is this action in Hollywood?" And you guys are making this stuff on shoestrings. Was that on your mind while making this movie? Did you want this to be a sort of showcase for you and the other martial artists like, "Hey, not only can we do this as well as you guys who have a hundred million dollars to play with, but we can do this better"? 

BF: Hollywood can be a strange thing. And look, Scott does great. Scott Adkins, I mean. He's such a cool guy, such a nice guy, and he really busts his gut to get his movies out. And he's always doing great stuff. He's putting the work in, doing all the fight scenes, and really putting it out there, which is great. And then you'll see these big, a hundred million dollars movies or big Hollywood blockbusters, and they've got some great actors, like fantastic actors who I'm huge fans of, but it is not the same. It is not the same when you get an actor, train them for a couple of months, cut fast edits, tight shots, and all that; it is not the same. And I don't want to take away from anyone or disrespect anyone, but when you have an actor that can actually do it, and they can actually do it at the highest level, I think that should be held in high regard because that's work.

There's beauty to the martial arts, there's effort, it's body awareness. It's beautiful to watch a good martial artist do their thing. And if they can act and they can bring the two together, those types of roles should be given to the actors that can do those types of things. Genuinely do it.

I, for one, if I go to the ballet and I'm watching a ballet dancer, I'm taken by the beauty, and the dancer who is at his or her prime that really can do it and perform. And that's what we look at and that's what we appreciate, and that's what we love. The camera doesn't lie. Even for actors, if you're not completely invested, the audience looks at it and says, "Oh, I don't know about that." Maybe they might not be able to articulate it and pinpoint it because they might not be able to put the acting terms into a sentence, because it's not their world. But they might look at that and think because they can see an actor's not completely invested, why should they invest? And it's the same token now. When they look at something, you might have an A-list actor and fast edits, lots of stunt doubles coming in, and it just doesn't feel right and the audience aren't stupid, there's just something that doesn't feel right and they pull away.

Keanu Reeves, he does it. He puts the work in, he's a martial artist, he's got a black belt in judo and trains in kung fu. He's done a lot of training, but he does the work. Scott does the work. Michael Jai White, he does the work. So I think it's having a little bit more respect for that. Also, having a little bit more respect for the audience. Pull the camera back, allow the actor and the person who can really do the stuff to do it and to showcase it and then let the audience decide, let the people decide if they want to see more. There's a difference. And I think that needs to be respected, but unfortunately that's not always the case.

BS: With the talk of a Stunt Oscar getting louder and louder each year, I always try to end my conversations with action guys on a two-parter. 

First, and this is a gimme, do you think there should be a Stunt Oscar and second, maybe a bit tougher, what was your favorite stunt or fight to pull off in Life After Fighting? **

BF:  Absolutely. Absolutely there should be a stunt Oscar. Because of the work ethic that actually goes into it, the amount of training…there are stunt guys that work their butt off, they're in the gym, they're training every day, they're doing martial arts every day. They're practicing their high falls, they're practicing car work. I mean, there are a lot of specialists in the United States, but here in Australia, the stunt guys, they have to be proficient in so many different things.

But I've got to give credit to, especially the martial arts guys in the States, because I was around it a little bit. They worked, worked so hard, and they're the ones in the suits for the Marvel movies, they're the ones doing the big fight scenes. They're the ones that are doing all the acrobatic stuff that make the actor look fantastic. And most of the time, the A-listers aren't doing the stuff. The stunt guys are stepping in and making them look fantastic. There absolutely needs to be awards for them. That cannot and should not go unrecognized.

As for my favorite within the film, I would have to say the last fight with Red Sleeves. And look, they were all great but you can see there's a steady progression. And when he starts fighting at the end, first he's fighting to just knock people out or choke them out. But then he starts to realize that he is not just going to knock them out or choke them out. He has to take it to the next level. In order for them to stop, he has to start killing them. And he's just a normal guy. He's not some kind of hitman or soldier. He's a combat athlete. He's never killed anyone in his life. So he has to mentally take that journey to go over. And as he starts progressing and realizing he has to kill people, something inside him just starts to come out. And then right at the end when he thinks he's finished, he faces Red Sleeves and it's like, "Ah", he thought he was done, but then he has to go one last time 

When we watched it on the monito,. I said to Shane Parsons and Navid, and my wife who was a producer too, I said to them, "It looks sped up, doesn't it?" And we are watching the monitor, and they're like, "Yeah", and we watch it again. And I called this couple of stunt guys. I go, "Look at this. Look how fast we are going." I said, "We're going to get accused of speeding it up, look at it." And they're like, "Holy hell, it's fast." I go, "Yeah, but we worked our asses off to get it to that speed."

And some of it actually, because we knew each other so well, there'd be an extra punch or a knee come up and we'd just flow with it. There were extra techniques there that weren't in the choreography. Sometimes there's a one two punch, a back fist, a knee that was never supposed to be in there, but it just would flow and the techniques would come out. And we were so accustomed to training together.

So, that last fight with Red Sleeves, I think that was my favorite just because of the level, the speed that we were going, the throws, the weapons. It went from hand work to kicks to throws to judo to the jiu-jitsu to a little bit of the Filipino martial arts, and then going into the sword against the stick and then using the broken parts and then through the window and ultimately leading to its conclusion. So yeah, definitely the end fight with Red Sleeves. That was my favorite.

**Since this interview was recorded the Academy has introduced a stunt design Oscar to begin in the 2027 awards season.

Life After Fighting is available to stream in North America on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and wherever films are rentable.