Aftermath’s loosely based on the true story of a real accident that happened 15 years ago in Germany, when a pair of passenger planes tragically collided in mid-air. Screenwriter Javier Gullon (who wrote Denis Villeneuve’s fabulously strange Enemy) moves the story to Ohio, where migrant construction worker Roman (Schwarzenegger) is waiting at the airport for his family arrives when an official pulls him aside to give him the bad news: their plane’s crashed with no survivors. Aftermath is therefore a two-hander, the story flicking between Roman and Jake as they flail around in their personal swamps of despair. McNairy, in particular, is excellent as Jake, and the scene in which he first realises the full magnitude of the accident is played with just the right level of horror and disbelief. Unfortunately, Aftermath doesn’t really have a whole lot more on its mind other than guilt, anguish and foreboding; it’s surely telling that, even at a duration of around 90 minutes including credits, the film still feels overlong. Part of the problem is the sparsity of actual drama; Schwarzenegger and McNairy spend long stretches on their own, sullenly performing daily tasks – mending a fence in the case of the former, working a customer service job at a cluttered desk for the latter – and we don’t really get to learn a whole lot about them other than their respective tragedies. Director Elliott Lester (Blitz, Nightingale) gives the story a metallic, autumnal hue, while Mark Todd’s music – redolent of Hans Zimmer’s score for The Thin Red Line – hints at the meditative tone of a Terrance Malick movie. Another comparison point might be Steve McQueen’s glacial sex addiction piece Shame, or Kenneth Lonergan’s portrait of grief, Manchester By The Sea; both told uncluttered, simple stories about complicated people. Aftermath provides late-career Schwarzenegger with another showcase for his weathered charisma, and also proves that McNairy’s a great actor who deserves to be in more stuff. They both deserve a project with a bit more dramatic meat on its bones. Aftermath is out now in selected UK cinemas.