Okay, #Afterburn #MovieReview. No spoilers.
From Wikipedia:
Afterburn is a 2025 American post-apocalyptic action film directed by J. J. Perry and written by Matt Johnson and Nimród Antal and stars Dave Bautista, Samuel L. Jackson, Olga Kurylenko and Kristofer Hivju. It is based on the Red 5 Comics graphic novel of the same name by Scott Chitwood, Paul Ens, and Wayne Nichols. The story is set a decade after the Earth's technology was decimated by a solar flare. Original development began in 2018, then halted, and restarted in 2024.
I liked it. I also liked Babylon A.D., which this reminded of, for whatever reason. Do with that whatever you will. I think this one is being slept on, and I'd like to explain why.
Let me just jump straight to the third act; we get one of my favorite action movie tropes: a series of fight scenes from one car to the next on a train. Definitely far from the first or the last movie to have that idea—hence why it's a trope—but hey, it works, hence why it's a trope.
The cinematography, the editing, and the stunt work are at their best, IMO—during chase scenes, actually. With the exception of Wikipedia, I'm writing this off the cuff, so this is conjecture on my part, but most of it looked to me like it was done in camera. I'm sure CGI had to have been used to some extent, obviously, but when we see a vehicle go airborne, for instance, it looks like it actually did.
Our protagonist has a thing for blowing shit up, and the movie is borderline self-aware about this to the effect that, by the third act, it's basically become a running gag. I liked that. The explosions looked good whether they were CGI or not. I could fault it for realism in a few of these cases, and by that I mean that real hand grenades do not produce comically large, fiery explosions, but whatever; it's not that serious.
The movie does a really good job of showing us where the good guys and the bad guys are, in reference to each other, by means of literally showing us a map. Again, not original, but it works. Honestly, the most original thing it does is one big plot twist, and I said no spoilers.
There was some entirely unnecessary ADR in one scene that really took me out of it: he finds some convenient-to-the-plot rope right when-and-where he needs to rappel, and says in a completely normal voice, "this is what I have to do now" while facing away from the camera. That didn't add anything; I'm sorry.
Score: 8.5/13
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