Crew
Director – J.J. Perry, Screenplay – Nimrod Antal & Matt Johnson, Based on the Graphic Novel Afterburn (2008) by Scott Chitwood & Paul Ens, Producers – Toby Jaffe, Chris Milburn, Neal H. Moritz & Steve Richards, Photography – Jose David Montero, Music – Roque Banos, Visual Effects Supervisor – Eran Barnea, Visual Effects – Blue Faces (Supervisor – Marek Jezo), EDI (Supervisor – Gaia Bussolati), Ionart Studios (Supervisor – Balazs Drenkovics), Lola UK (Supervisor – Edson Williams) & Lipsync Post (Supervisor – Gareth Repton), Special Effects – YD Special Effects KFT., Production Design – Matthew Gant. Production Company – Endurance Media/Original Film/Dogbone Entertainment/Lipsync/Frame Film S.K. s.r.o..
Cast
Dave Bautista (Jake), Olga Kurylenko (Drea), Samuel L. Jackson (King August Valentine), Kristofer Hivju (General Volkov), Kevin Eldon (Father Samson), Eden Epstein (Fuentes), George Somner (Pilot)
Plot
It is six years after a solar flare has brought about the collapse of civilisation worldwide. In England, Jake is the top treasure hunter, locating objects of value for the self-styled king August Valentine. The king now persuades Jake to undertake a mission for him, offering him a yacht as incentive. He wants Jake to go into the lawless anarchic land that is now France and retrieve the Mona Lisa. Jake parachutes into France where he is aided by Drea, one of the rebels fighting against the tyrant General Volkov. Hotly pursued by Volkov’s forces, they follow the trail leading to the Mona Lisa.
Afterburn (2008) was a graphic novel from Red 5 Comics, created by Scott Chitwood and Paul Ens. It appeared in an initial run of four issues, each featuring a different adventure by the treasure hunter Jake in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. The movie rights were snapped up in 2010. After this point, several other issues of the comic were produced by Chitwood. The film has been through various stages of greenlight and turnaround since then under directors like Antoine Fuqua and Tommy Wirkola and announced to have starred Gerard Butler and Nicolas Cage.
The director to finally take on the film is J.J. Perry who has worked as a stuntman or stunt coordinator on a crapload of films including X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), Django Unchained (2013), the Avatar sequels and John Wick films and has directed second unit for various Fast and the Furious sequels. Perry made his directorial debut with the enjoyable vampire hunter comedy Day Shift (2022), followed by the previous non-genre Dave Bautista film The Killer’s Game (2024).
Afterburn has essentially been construed as an Indiana Jones movie but with the title role recast with a standard Action Movie star. If anything, what it resembles more than Indiana Jones is the cable-film Lost City Raiders (2008), which had treasure hunters locating artwork artifacts in a post-apocalyptic future (a drowned world there, standard social collapse here).
Afterburn is a film that within minutes you realise is not taking itself at all seriously. The action frequently seems absurd. You are not even sure who it seems aimed for. The mental age of the film seems for teens and under, whereas the fight scenes are often quite a bit more brutal than that. Dave Bautista gets excruciating Schwarzenegger-esque one-liners. Everything plays to action movie standard. There are inane chase sections in the middle of the film that seem pitched down at the sort of audiences that gets excited about big wheels truck races as we watch extended scenes with vehicles stunt jumping and racing through explosions.
The depiction of the post-apocalyptic world is completely routine. There is no imagination gone into any of it, nothing that has not been drawn from a long line of cliches. Kristofer Hivju is cast as a one-dimensional villain who has an absurd penchant borrowed from Darth Vader of killing his recalcitrant lackeys.
Trailer here