Explosive
Summary
Affinity is director Brandon Slagle’s finest movie yet with Marko Zaror once again proving he is one of the best in the business; there are some fantastic fight scenes and the final showdown between Zaror and Brahim Chab is the standout.
Plot: A PTSD-afflicted ex-SEAL rescues and falls for a woman only to lose her to mysterious kidnappers. He gathers an elite team to retrieve her but soon discovers the shocking truth: she’s been bio-engineered by a scientist grieving his wife.
Review: Marko Zaror is rapidly becoming my favourite modern action star; I’ve enjoyed all his films up until now even if sometimes they don’t have a huge budget.
This is his first English speaking lead role and he knocks it out of the park showing vulnerability as well as toughness. He is a skilled martial artist, and I like how his fight scenes always look different where with some other onscreen fighters they use the same moves a lot of the time.
Affinity is proof you don’t need to have $100 million budgets to make an entertaining action movie as this has everything I’d want with regular fight scenes, memorable characters and nasty villains. It also has a brisk runtime clocking in at just under 80 minutes and is never dull.
As the plot says above, Affinity tells the story of Bruno (Zaror) a soldier with PTSD who falls in love with a mysterious woman called Athena (Jane Mirro); she is taken by kidnappers led by Krieger (Brahim Chab) and it’s up to Bruno to save her.
Directed by Brandon Slagle, Affinity grabbed me from the very start with its action-packed opening scene followed by one of the most stylish credits sequences I’ve seen for some time. This is easily Slagle’s finest hour as a director, and I’d love to see what he could do with a big franchise.
After the awesome opening scene, the pace slows a little as Bruno rescues Athena and they have essentially a love story which is what this film is really about. It gives us time to get to know them both and for Bruno to heal from his emotional torment.
Louis Mandylor makes every movie better with his mere presence and he gets to shine here in some emotional scenes while also getting in on the action too.
The score to Affinity by Rocco is sublime electronica and feels like John Carpenter meets Daft Punk. The film looks great too with its vibrant colours and the fight scenes are some of the year’s best.
You can see every punch and kick with the final showdown between Marko and Brahim, the clear highlight. I always like seeing Brahim in a decent sized role like this although as I’ve said before I’d love to see him as a heroic lead rather than antagonist.
Overall, Affinity is one of my favourite action movies of the year with Marko Zaror at his ass-kicking best, an awesome music score and a hateful villain in Brahim.