Maggie: 7 Tics In Arnie’s Performance That Make It Great

As well as returning to the fold for the latest Terminator movie (and stealing just about every scene), Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking an entirely different path with the far more tender, far more nuanced Maggie, a zombie apocalypse movie with a more legitimate heart-beat than the genre typically offers. This isn't your usual all guts and glory, hundreds of faceless kills zombie movie: it's rather a touching, at times devastating look at what infection and loss actually mean in human terms.

It is, quite honestly, the most authentic portrait of that cost, which is more concerned with the idea of becoming dead rather than grotesquely celebrating what it means to become undead. And at its heart is a genius understated performance by an actor whose versatility is never as openly applauded as it should be. If Copland was Sylvester Stallone's proof that his acting chops could flex as impressively as his muscles, Maggie does the same for Arnie, whose status as a bona-fide legend makes gentle, understated performances like this all the more surprising and delightful.

This is no typical action movie performance. He's not the invulnerable superman figure Hollywood seems so fascinated by at the moment; he's a father, made vulnerable by his love for a rapidly deteriorating daughter who is the centre of his universe. And the performance is rich and layered in a way that even the usual back-to-the-wall hero father roles tend not to be, thanks to the way the film has approached its message. There's a lot going on beneath that hulking surface, and identifying exactly how Arnie built the character is key to understanding his success...

7. He's Vulnerable

Particularly in his first sequence when Arnie arrives at the hospital where his daughter has reappeared after a two week flight to "freedom", which is in fact more to do with her infection than a traditional teenage sojourn in the Big City. That scene is carefully, starkly shot on Arnie's shoulder for the most part, as his trepidation builds with every haunting vision of infected victims and intercut shot of Maggie fleeing through the streets in a simultaneous flashback. The same framing happens elsewhere, cut with POV shots that verge on frantic, and it reinforces the idea of his distinct lack of safety. Throughout there's very much a sense that despite the familiar, gigantic size, this version of Arnie - this placid, quiet farmer - is made excruciatingly vulnerable by the marriage of fear, ignorance and the awful reality of the infections around him.