There’s nothing quite like widespread global destruction that will ignite feelings between the two last remaining people on Earth. After all, it’s not as if their date cards are full.
In “Z is for Zachariah,” Chiwetel Ejiofor’s John Loomis and Margot Robbie’s Ann Burden and discover each other, believing they are the last remaining souls of civilization, so sparks fly, naturally.
But things turn messy when there’s third wheel.
“If you’re the first guy who turns up in this place and you’re building this dynamic with a girl, and then another guy turns up, the instinct is, sadly, to go, ‘I was here first and that means something, there’s an order to this,’” Ejiofor says.
Of course, when Caleb, played by Chris Pine, enters the picture later, he’s not willing to wait his turn for Ann’s affections—and Ejiofor says he doesn’t blame him.
“Caleb (Pine) doesn’t believe in that at all, and neither should he,” Ejiofor admits of the love triangle. “That’s what creates their masculine tension.”
As the last people known to be alive on Earth, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Margot Robbie‘s characters wisely learned to get along in “Z for Zachariah.”
“They navigate each other as the only two people around,” Ejiofor tells Made in Hollywood. It’s the Adam and Eve but for real. It’s a strong element to investigate.”
The pair bond after discovering each other in the wake of a disaster that has caused widespread destruction and wiped out most of civilization. But halfway through the film, Chris Pine finds the pair – and what happens next is a love triangle between what’s believed to be all that’s left of humanity.
The stunning 25-year-old impressively plays what her character Ann thinks is the last woman on earth after surviving a nuclear war.
The Craig Zobel-directed sci-fi flick – which also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine as fellow survivors who come into Robbie’s life, creating a love triangle – received a Rotten Tomatoes score of 83 percent. While this number is significantly higher than a good portion of the other films released this summer, some reviewers pan the film’s slow pace and cliche plot.
“This dull, slow movie represents a major step back for director Craig Zobel, who looked like he was ready for the big time with his deeply unsettling ‘Compliance’ a couple of years ago. The new one is, I’m afraid, though competently executed, pretty much a waste of time. But it’s a step up for the hugely talented 24-year-old Australian Margot Robbie, by far the best element of ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ …” — Kyle Smith, New York Post
“The film remains strangely inert, and the romantic triangle at the story’s center never gives off any real passion or heat. If John and Caleb are intended as twin pillars of science and spirituality, in the end they seem like two basically decent people who realize that there is no solution to this equation that involves both of them … building to an incredibly contrived climax straight out of an old Saturday morning serial. Who ends up with whom in the end? It scarcely seems to matter.” — Scott Foundas, Variety
But others believe the plot was pulled off just right, with the perfect actor selection.
“In the end, it is the actors who deliver this. Ejiofor’s John is a stoic whose frequent glower suggests dark secrets, and Pine’s deceptively folksy, almost feral Caleb is so charming that you don’t trust it. But it is Robbie’s Ann who truly compels, as a courageous, stalwart, devout moral beacon who makes even physical passion seem spiritual. Rarely have only three people seemed less like only three people.” — Michael Sauter, Film Journal
“The acting is excellent across the board … Much of ‘Z is for Zachariah’ is left for the viewer to contemplate, which is both an implicit challenge to the audience but also an implied compliment. The last human beings alive will still be human; that reality, and that realism, is what makes ‘Z is For Zachariah’ both compelling and worth seeing.” — James Rocchi, About.com