For hours of queuing, overpriced admission-and all of this, so that you can take a quick look at the most famous painting in the world in a completely overcrowded room: Paris tourists are often not afraid of any costs and effort to at least come close to the Mona Lisa. In this respect, it is not surprising that Dave Bautista ends up in “Afterburn” a number of shot and stab wounds and even jumps out of an airplane, although he has never used a parachute before, just to get to that Mona Lisa.
Yes, this is actually the plot of JJ Perry's dystopian action film, which feels like a film from the 1980s not only because of his absurd concept: Muskelprot BauTista tears sayings as if it were the young Schwarzenegger, while the action is pleasantly handmade, very bloody and almost without CGI. And with all the B-Movie glory, one or the other exciting subtext is hidden under the surface.
Dave Bautista not only commemorates the stature of the young Schwarzenegger, his Onelin also aims in a similar direction!
As is so often the case in the cinema, the world has also been lost in “Afterburn”: the failure of electricity and telephone followed the collapse of order. King August (Samuel L. Jackson) took over the rule on the British island. In the event of upcoming missions, he regularly uses the skills of Haudengent Jake (Dave Bautista). After he has captured a valuable stradivari for the king's museum, Jake should find the Mona Lisa next, because without culture a society could not thrive.
It's just stupid that the most famous painting in the world is somewhere on the mainland, because in good old Europe there are now chaos and anarchy: the Warlord Volkov (Kristofer Hivju) is suppressed with brutal methods in the region that once had the name France. Nevertheless, Jake gets involved and soon meets the resistance fighter Drea (Olga Kurylenko), who supports him in the search for Mona Lisa …
B-movie charm with a shot of high culture as a special spice
An intruder hangs upside down in a noose, whereupon Jack only a dry “What are you hanging around here?” press out. Yes, these are oneliners, as you know them from the good old days of the rustic B-Pictures, in which inflated action stars from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Steven Seagal made it possible without considering losses and incidentally made casual sayings. With ex-wrestler Dave Bautista, a contemporary actor is now preparing to fill these footsteps-and does this from the first moment, so almost without any facial expressions.
However, the usual B-Movie rusticity in “Afterburn” is counteracted with high culture: in the first scene, Jack opens a safe by playing an Allegro as a musical password and thus reaching a valuable violin. Afterwards he is directly opposed to a horde of dark guys who definitely watched too much “clockwork orange”, but are then quickly shot or blown up.
Samuel L. Jackson as a British king? The role actually lacked the role in his long, versatile career!
From the beginning, director JJ Perry (“The Killer's Game”) proves to be a man for the rough one who does not make any prisoners. At first known primarily as a Stuntman or Martial Arts coordinator, he is now making straightforward action films, in which it crashes and rumbles as in the old days. “Afterburn” was shot in Slovakia, which fits well with the anarchic world in which history plays. A short sequence at the beginning only loosens a sun-eruption baking ground that fell into chaos in the first place.
The entire European mainland seems to have developed into a lawless region in which the stronger one prevails and resistance groups are planning the rebellion. On the one hand, the fact that the action plays predominantly in the former France suggests that the Volkov, in order not to say: Russian is connoted, to the presence of the eastern borders of Europe, especially the Ukraine.
No matter if you wanted or pure coincidence: exciting subtext!
And so from the mission that Jake initially accepts for selfish reasons (he was promised a sailboat and thus freedom), soon a struggle between good and evil: “If we don't fight Volkov, nobody does,” Drea Jake says, and asks him not only to fulfill his mission, but rather to work for her and the resistance. According to the script, Drea is a French woman, but that the role of Olga Kurylenko has been filled is an interesting mix of fiction and reality: the former Bond girl (“A Quantum Trost”) was born in the Ukrainian Berdjans, a city on the Asowian Sea since the beginning of Putin's war.
Regardless of whether this is a coincidence or not, it gives “Afterburn” an immediacy that was not necessarily to be expected at first. Even if the film is no longer at its core and does not want to be more than a straightforward, hard action film, such subtexts give it a special quality. Similar to “28 Years Later”, “Afterburn” plays in a fictional, dystopian future, but the connotations for the present and current conflicts make such films such as subliminal allegories that may be pure entertainment on the surface, but in the subtext of which still swings a whole trail.
Conclusion: With “Afterburn” Dave Bautista cements his status as a modern B-Picture hero, which pulls through a dystopian world with crispy sayings and heavy arms in order to fulfill an initially abandoned-sounding mission, which in the end still extends to the usual struggle between good and evil. An old-fashioned, largely handmade film that stands out from the modern CGI overkill soothingly.