"Thoughtful" and "somber" are not words one
traditionally uses to describe anything starring Arnold Schwarzenegger,
especially since his career rebirth, but those words apply to Maggie, the most surprising
film of his muscular career. Surprising because the film deals with a world in
the midst of a zombie apocalypse, but you won't find Schwarzenegger stacking up
piles of undead corpses or anything like that. Instead, Maggie is an affecting
family drama that should appeal to fans of The
Walking Dead rather than
those expecting Dawn of the
Dead.
Directed by graphic designer Henry Hobson,
the atmosphere is a portrait of misery and despair in the wake of a zombie
virus outbreak. Schwarzenegger is Wade, a stoic Midwestern farmer who tracks
down his runaway daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) and discovers she's been
infected by "The Turn". While the worst of the chaos seems to be
over, the world has settled into a "quarantine and eliminate"
scenario for the diseased, but Wade isn't about to let that happen to his
terrified daughter. Instead he chooses to bring her back home where his second
wife (Joely Richardson) and her two kids await for the morbid family reunion.
Hobson and screenwriter John Scott 3
explore parental denial and terminal illness, while the whole zombie aspect is
basically just a grim window dressing. They're more concerned with the dynamics
of a family in a perpetual state of mourning, and the distressing effect
illness can have on the family structure. Wade is doing what any parent would
want to do for their dying child, which is take care of them and make their
final days comfortable, but he's also completely delusional and unprepared for
the reality. Everyone, including his wife, knows what needs to be done but he
either doesn't see it or refuses to accept it. This doesn't make for the most
exciting movie in the world; in fact it's pretty slow even for 90-minutes in
length, but the emotions are agonizingly real. Even the happy moments, like a
fun, romantic night out between Maggie and her infected boyfriend, is tinged
with sadness.
It isn't long before Maggie's
deteriorating condition becomes a concern for more than just Wade. The police
aggressively push for her to be quarantined, but Wade persistently acts as if
he and his daughter are the only two people left in the entire world. The focus
on Wade's grief takes away from some of the deeper issues that could have been
explored, like the conflict within the household itself. But one has to
appreciate that the film doesn't go in the most obvious of directions. There
are only a couple of scenes where Wade is forced to kill and there is weight
behind those decisions that Schwarzenegger carries on his broad shoulders.
Interestingly, his action-hero past adds certain humbleness, an unexpected
gravity to his performance. He doesn't need to say a lot to be effective here.
Will Maggie steer Schwarzenegger away from
blockbusters? Probably not, but it goes a long way in showing that in the right
kind of film and the perfect role, Schwarzenegger is capable of more than being an expendable terminator.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
