{"id":49412,"date":"2025-08-29T00:01:52","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T04:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=49412"},"modified":"2025-08-28T00:19:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:19:53","slug":"affinity-2025-bigbad-film-fest-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/29\/affinity-2025-bigbad-film-fest-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Affinity (2025) [BigBad\u00a0Film Fest 2025]\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A man with a past finds a woman on his dock who\u00a0seems to have\u00a0none. Soon, she finds herself hunted and he will go any end to save her.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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From a story by Marko\u00a0Zaror\u00a0and Daniel Zirilli and written for the screen by Gina\u00a0Aguard, Christopher M. Don, Liam O\u2019Neill, and Marko\u00a0Zaror, and directed by Brandon Slagle, Affinity is an action film with a touch of science fiction that is very minimal, something that barely affects the story beyond giving its start and its reason for happening, which may sound\u00a0odd here. The film as is feels like a fully action film with some touches of science fiction when its story depends on the science fiction to get started.\u00a0Overall, the story here works and is a great excuse for plenty of fight scenes which are plentiful. The writing works and so does the direction, showing that a good team can pull off a solid action film on a\u00a0medium budget.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The cast here is led by Marko\u00a0Zaror\u00a0as the hero, the man who has PTSD and lost his brother at war, a man who needs to find purpose, which he finds after a mysterious woman, played by Jane Mirro.\u00a0Zaror\u00a0gives the type of performance his fans are used to, decent acting with kickass fighting. His first fight scene in this movie is fantastic (and fantastically shot, more on that later)\u00a0and so is the last one. The performance he gives will make action fans\u00a0very happy. Jane Mirro here gives a\u00a0sort of perpetually\u00a0confused-looking performance, something that works with the part she\u00a0has\u00a0and the innocence Athena is supposed to\u00a0represent. Joining\u00a0Zaror\u00a0and Mirro on the\u00a0\u201cgood guys\u201d side of the story are Louis\u00a0Mandylor\u00a0as Joe and Brooke Ence as Fitch\u00a0and both do quite well here, giving their characters personality and letting the lead be the hero while lending an assist. On the bad guy side of things, Brahim Chab shines as Krieger, a character of a few words, but a man capable of taking on\u00a0Zaror\u00a0in a fight, something that is not easy to pull off. Their main fight is one for the books here. The supporting cast also does decent work, some of them as\u00a0basic bad guys, some of them as fighters, and a bunch as characters meant to\u00a0establish\u00a0the universe here and advance\u00a0the story.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Now, this being an action film with some crazy fight scenes, the fight choreography is\u00a0really important. Using\u00a0Zaror\u00a0and his skills to put these together was a fantastic idea and bringing in Tony Jaa\u2019s stunt team was an excellent more. These folks know how to fight, how to make it look good on film, and how to entertain. To go with these fights\u00a0the cinematography by Niccolo De La Fere is fantastic. After learning that the first fight sequence was shot by him holding the camera and moving around the fight, the look of it is even more impressive. The film also uses a drone sporadically to\u00a0great effect, especially in one scene near the end that will not be spoiled here. As a small blemish\u00a0on the whole\u00a0here, the intro to the film is clearly AI, complete with garbled language on missing posters, something that thankfully is only on the opening and does not appear throughout the film.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Affinity is an action sci-fi film that hits\u00a0just right\u00a0on the action beats and is almost low on the sci-fi aspect while the story depends on it to get started. The fights are\u00a0excellent,\u00a0and the cinematography is memorable. There is a lot here to watch and rewatch, so fans of these types of films should be more than happy.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man with a past finds a woman on his dock who\u00a0seems to have\u00a0none. Soon, she finds herself hunted and he will go any end to save her.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284],"tags":[58,906],"class_list":["post-49412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivalsevents","tag-action","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49414,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49412\/revisions\/49414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}