Aftermath

Aftermath

“Aftershock,” a new revenge movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is much more thoughtful and gloomy than his Austrian fans would expect from the leading man. However, that does not necessarily make it good just because it unusually focuses on characters, mood and psychological realism. We wait for something to happen throughout most of the film after two strangers a construction foreman (Schwarzenegger) and an air traffic controller (Scoot McNairy) have their lives implicitly intertwined by the collision of two commercial airliners.

“Aftermath” should be commended because it takes its time before these two characters meet in some kind of climactic way; this is unusual for Hollywood movies. But more often than not, it feels dead inside and angsty outside mostly because it never has anything profound to say about grieving beyond putting you through well-worn representations of post-traumatic stress disorder.

And then there’s the fact that Roman Polanski’s new film is so disappointing when you consider how good he actually is in it once again proving that despite having only one mood (brooding), he really knows how to deliver when given half a chance.

Schwarzenegger plays Roman Melnyk, a man who works with his hands but can’t bring himself to do anything with them after a plane crash caused by both equipment failure and well-meaning family man named Jake (McNairy)’s negligence kills his wife, daughter and unborn granddaughter. That’s devastating stuff! And so Roman mourns: He stays at home; he doesn’t see anyone; he visits their graves every day; he stares off into the middle distance a lot.

This is emotionally dead territory for Schwarzenegger, which means he gets to be moody and exhausted his two main emotional registers over these past few performances. Jake doesn’t know Roman either, but we are shown that they suffer just as much as each other. Jake can’t concentrate at work anymore; he tries to show love to his wife and son, but that doesn’t take; he sleeps like crap and watches too much news and gets hounded by reporters at all hours of the day. So you understand when I say that a lot of this movie is spent waiting for these two characters to catch up with each other because then you’ll appreciate how much emotional pressure this puts on them both.

Revenge movies are always about the final confrontation, right? About how they’ll get ’em back? And so it is with “Aftermath,” but also about what happens in between those two points: Not only what brings a character to want revenge, but why now? The stakes must be higher than ever before. But then again, this movie stops making narrative sense past a certain point because it’s really just a series of scenes designed to show you how sad these people are. Which isn’t always bad!

Schwarzenegger carries many of these scenes; my favorite part is when Roman has to sit in front of a panel of unfeeling bureaucrats who won’t even look him in the eye and demands somebody apologize for the death of his family, which is such a hackneyed scene I mean, who needs another one where some angry dude yells at ass-covering company men while Danny Elfman goes nuts with the strings? but there’s still something raw about Schwarzenegger here.

The scenes in the middle of Jake and his wife Christina (Maggie Grace) are also routine, but they’re intense. When she tries to break through his self-pity and persuade him that a temporary separation might help save their marriage, you believe these people are in agony. Grace is real in that way even if the scenes themselves do inevitably revolve around McNairy’s hang-dog expression, and his pitiful inability to do anything but pout and parrot his wife’s suggestion that they spend some time apart for their son’s sake.

But there are too many scenes where Jake and Roman sulk unproductively and revel in shell-shock. The film’s cast do the hard work of making you believe these characters exist, but director Elliott Lester (“Blitz,” “Nightingale”) and screenwriter Javier Gullon rarely give them anything worth saying. Gullon skillfully avoids some major clichés, and genuinely gives you the impression that he’s interested in his characters’ inner lives.

But what does it say about “Aftermath” that Roman’s inner turmoil is expressed through generic recurring nightmares about his wife and daughter’s airplane breaking apart before his eyes? And why does the movie dwell so much on Jake’s marriage to the point where it inadvertently confirms his latent fear that he is nothing without his family? “Aftermath” is consistently too neat to be thoughtful.

Still, I don’t want to dismiss this film too quickly: It gives us a rare opportunity to see Schwarzenegger one of our last great action stars prove he’s more than just biceps. In a couple of scenes, Schwarzenegger appears with his clothes off, as if to take away from the mystique of his hulking figure. He’ll never be average; but when he has his chin stuck to his chest like it was glued there by nuns, and looks down with his eyes on his feet, he looks a lot less scary. The man still radiates menace when he needs to, but he never had to work so hard for it.

No more one-liners, and no more gory deaths. Today’s Schwarzenegger is a man of inaction. This new look kind of works for Schwarzenegger, an actor whose limited range has often made him the target of unfair criticism. Now the man doesn’t have to just be present (though that’s arguably more than most stars are able to do). Here, his essence is boiled down to a deferred look, a hard stare or a slumped pose or, put another way: His body talks without over-acting the obvious. I wish it had something more to say.

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