Aftermath (2017)

Aftermath (2017)

IMDB Rating  : 6.2/10 (as on 08.04.2017)

Two strangers' lives become inextricably bound together after a devastating plane crash. Inspired by actual events, AFTERMATH tells a story of guilt and revenge after an air traffic controller's (Scoot McNairy) error causes the death of a construction foreman's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wife and daughter.

Director: Elliott Lester

Writer: Javier Gullón

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maggie Grace, Kevin Zegers

R | 1h 34min | Drama, Thriller

IMDB link Here

Movie rating ★★☆☆☆  

 Arnold Schwarzenegger can't rescue drab disaster drama

Peter Bradshaw

Under different circumstances, something could have been made of this well-intentioned movie, a story of tragedy and obsession based on the 2002 Überlingen disaster, in which the collision of two jets in German airspace resulted in 71 deaths.

The action is transplanted to Columbus, Ohio, and Scoot McNairy does a decent job playing Jake, the air traffic controller involved. There is a very tense opening sequence in the control tower as disaster approaches. Arnold Schwarzenegger trudges through his role as Roman, a construction worker whose wife and pregnant daughter are killed in the crash, and who battles to find any official prepared to offer him a meaningful apology.

The screenwriter is Javier Gullón, who scripted Denis Villeneuve’s interesting doppelganger drama Enemy in 2013, and the film was co-produced by Schwarzenegger with Darren Aronofsky. I can imagine it coming to life in the hands of a director like Alejandro González Iñárritu or Jacques Audiard, but this is a two-dimensional piece of work.

 Read full review at The Guardian

Movie rating ★☆☆☆☆   

Arnold Schwarzenegger's dramatic comeback has a very rough landing

Tim Robey

Even woeful films can distinguish themselves with grace notes. The one in Aftermath occurs when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, a construction foreman called Roman, is absorbing the worst news of his life. His wife and pregnant daughter have just died, in a mid-air collision between two planes, while travelling back for Christmas. All those balloons and "Welcome Home" signs put out for nothing. The humanity.

Arnie’s placidly seated in an airport interrogation room when officials relay the news. This colossal shock to the system merely renders him speechless. What we hear instead is a caged grief through the walls – the muted bellowing and pounding of another, unknown man getting the same information in an adjacent room. It’s a potent window on this hideous communal tragedy, for about a second.

There are no other good seconds. The film takes leave of credibility early, but thinks 271 people unconvincingly dying in the sky should power it through, even though little else happens you could dignify with the word story. Arnie mopes and grieves and wants the airlines, especially their atrociously acted settlement lawyers, to say they’re sorry.

McNairy, usually so good, is the one unenviably forced to do all the emoting, trapped invasively in snivelling close-ups. We know the script will eventually bring these two suicidal men face to face, as if it were something catastrophe-conjurer Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Babel) had cooked up with no notice on a monster hangover.

It’s entirely possible they’ll just hug it all out. But the point of it as drama is hilariously elusive, unless British director Elliott Lester (Blitz) had more B-roll shots of diagonally-streaking contrails than he knew what to do with. (They are countless.)

Arnie, in hair net, rocking his future grandchild’s cot pre-news and even stroking its ultrasound can only strike us as A Very Bad Sign. But scoring this montage to Jingle All The Way, of all songs, feels awfully close to mockery.

Read full review at Telegraph

Arnold Schwarzenegger admirably attempts to widen his range in his latest effort, about a man grieving over the loss of his wife and daughter in a plane crash. As in his similarly ambitious acting stretch, 2015’s Maggie, the former action star here delivers an impressively subtle, restrained performance. Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite have the chops to do full justice to the material, and his decades-long, popcorn movie image proves a further impediment. Despite the seriousness of his intentions, Aftermath doesn’t pack sufficient emotional punch.

That the two shattered men’s lives would ultimately and tragically intersect becomes apparent from the beginning of Javier Gullon’s screenplay, inspired by a real-life incident. But Gullon, whose previous credits include the far more thematically complex Enemy, doesn’t provide much depth to the schematic storyline, with the result that the film mostly feels like a slow-paced slog featuring a hokey, melodramatic ending. Director Elliott Lester (Love is the Drug), employing a relentlessly drab visual palette, fails to provide stylistic imagination to the proceedings. The sole exception is an arresting scene in which Roman, hiding his connection to the event, volunteers at the crash site and discovers his daughter’s body.

Sporting the scruffy grey beard that, as it did in Maggie, signifies that he’s doing serious acting, Schwarzenegger gives a creditable, underplayed turn. But it’s hard not to wonder what a more accomplished thespian would have done in the role. McNairy, on the other hand, delivers an emotionally complex portrait of guilt that sporadically provides Aftermath with the dramatic resonance to which it so obviously aspires.

 Read full review at Hollywood Reporter

Despite the low expectations it turns out Arnold Schwarzenegger in Aftermath is actually pretty bloody good

Jamie East

In fact, after a slightly iffy start, it’s really quite bloody good.

Arnie play Ronald, a man who learns his family have died in a plane crash and Scoot McNairy (Argo, 12 Years a Slave) plays Jake, the air traffic controller largely responsible for the accident.

The film plays out, over a long period of time, the guilt, grief and devastation caused by this event – intertwining the pair’s lives forever.

If you ignore the klaxon-like Apprentice references and the few odd moments that stand out lie a sore thumb (mainly bad acting from some dreadful airline company lawyers) this is a very raw film and it catches you by complete surprise.

All the main cast give good turns – but this should almost certainly return Arnie to our bosoms.

It’s a terrific, grizzled performance, reminding me of Sylvester Stallone’s brief rebirth as a dramatic actor in ‘Copland’.

Read full review at The sun