He also did not go with his wife to go bring his daughter back to the US. What indicates this eventuality starts from his boss telling him he should leave work early and take the next day off because he is about to become a grandfather and he must spend time with his wife and daughter. It's about Roman coming to terms with the fact that he neglected his family all along. To me this movie is not simply about Roman searching for the truth and getting his revenge. In parallel, we meet Jake (Scoot McNairy) who happens to be working in the arrival airport control tower and who is claimed responsible for the death of Roman's family and all the remaining passengers. The movie starts with Roman (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who is a 60ish years old man working in construction, who learns that his wife and daughter were killed in a plane crash. But imagine someone, maybe a Schwarzenegger fan, coming across this film in 20 years.Yesterday I watched Arnold Schwarzenegger latest movie Aftermath. And those are the parts he will be remembered for. He will keep doing the action roles, make no mistake. Often, he undercuts the largely melodramatic nature of the script with a subtle character choice, a quiver in his voice, or perhaps a twitch in his eyelid.Īftermath is a solid, but dark postscript to Arnold’s career. But it is in these exact shots that Scoot McNairy shows just how talented a performer he is. Arnold is at his best here when he doesn’t speak – which sounds like a criticism, but isn’t.ĭirector Elliott Lester shoots a lot of this film in tight close-ups, which often threatens to expose the cracks in Arnold’s acting, in addition to the ones on his now-grizzled face.
But it somehow manages to work around his larger-than-life persona. Films like Maggie, and to a lesser extent, The Last Stand (which is a fantastic film that everyone should watch). What is most surprising about Aftermath isn’t that it features a rare dramatic role for one of the biggest action stars in the history of movies – he’s been doing these more often in his post-Governor phase. He is forced to relocate, assume another identity, all the while battling his inner demons, the voices in his head that blame him, like the rest of the world, for everything that happened.Īnd when their plots collide – like the planes – it is equally devastating. His life, like Roman’s, is snatched away from him. Jacob, however, finds himself at the centre of a highly concentrated storm. And soon, it is overpowered, temporarily, by revenge. Roman’s grief is of a more primal nature. He was the air traffic controller present at the time of the crash and he is played, brilliantly, by the underrated Scoot McNairy (Argo, Batman v Superman, Halt and Catch Fire).įor the rest of its short run time, the film switches between Roman and Jacob, and explores, to inconsistent success, how the tragedy has affected their lives. It is the first of many moments in which Arnold displays considerable restraint in his performance, probably surprising himself more than anyone else.īut then – and this is the best decision the filmmakers could’ve made – it shifts focus to the man who, for all intents and purposes, could be held responsible for the accident.
Roman is taken to an antiseptic-looking room, and told that their plane was involved in a mid-air collision, and that it is rare, in such accidents, for there to be any survivors. When the film opens, he is on his way to receiving them at the airport. Not that it ruins the experience – the story is powerful enough to work on its own – but it would, I assume, rob the film of some of well-earned drama.Īrnold Schwarzenegger plays Roman, an immigrant who works a regular blue-collar job, loves his wife, and is excited about becoming a grandfather for the first time. But in many ways – most of all its devastating resolution – the best way to approach it would be to watch it without any knowledge of the real life events.
#ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER MOVIE AFTERMATH SERIES#
This tragedy, and the terrible chain of events it set into motion in its aftermath, is perhaps the only one that I remember from that Discovery Channel series Air Crash Investigation. It’s the only moment of levity in a surprisingly and relentlessly sombre film about grief and the cyclical nature of revenge.Īftermath, another film in this new, more dramatic phase of Arnold’s career, is based on the infamous Überlingen mid-air collision of 2002, and the wake of destruction it left behind.
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