Annette Bening as a hazy 20th Century Woman
Aftermath HHHH is based on the true story of two planes that crashed in mid-air. The film opens with Roman Melnyk arriving at the airport to meet his wife and daughter – only to be told that they are dead. We spend the next 90 minutes in the company of a man sundered by grief.
So who do you imagine might be playing Roman? Max von Sydow in his dead-eyed Ingmar Bergman mode? Brendan Gleeson with his perpetually irate face tamped down to slowburn? Imagine again, because our broken hero is actually played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And guess what? Arnie turns out to be not half bad at the acting lark. Okay, the performance doesn’t range wide – Arnie’s essential schtick is to suggest mournfulness by keeping his eyes fixed on the ground – but it cuts deep. I defy anyone to watch Aftermath and come out knowing less about heartbreak and suffering than they did beforehand.
Only at the end does the film turn into a conventional heroic epic – and even then in a manner you wouldn’t expect of Arnie. In case you don’t know what became of the man Roman is based on, I will give no more away. But here’s hoping Arnie the actor is telling himself ‘I’ll be back.’
More real-life horror in Patriots Day HHHHH – a harrowing yet gripping account of the Boston Marathon bombing. Peter Berg’s movie opens like a Seventies disaster flick, with a montage of character studies that evoke innocence and promise. After that, though, it’s a downer.
You might want to stop watching around the 26minute mark – which is when the bombs go off. Truth be told, you don’t see much that’s gruesome, but the bangs are alarming – and Trent Reznor’s magnificent percussive score more frightening still.
From here on in the film becomes a conventional police thriller, with Sgt Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg), Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) and Special Agent Richard Deslauriers (Kevin Bacon) on the trail of the killers.
The closing half hour is a Day-Glo shoot-’emup but not once do you feel that Berg is making a spectacle of terror. Recommended.
With star turns from Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Annette Bening, 20th Century Women HHH should be a treat. But Mike Mills’ winsome Seventies-set melodrama is shapeless and blurry, and the film goes by in the kind of self-indulgent haze its young heroines can’t get enough of.