Review of Sabotage (2014) by Diego T — 18 Jul 2014

When it comes to police movies, David Ayer has really made a name for himself. He wrote the 2001 film Training Day, an excellent film about police corruption, and wrote and directed 2012's End of Watch. Such a shame it is, then, that he has been reduced to this. Whereas the two movies I just mentioned hinge mostly on their realistic portrayal of day-to-day life as a law enforcement agent, Sabotage, his latest effort, relies for the most part on cheap scares and shocking images to get its desired effect. Couple that with a far less capable cast, and you have a bit of a dog on your hands. This movie isn't quite terrible- But with some considerable talent on display, it should have been a lot better.

Sabotage stars Arnold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger as Breacher, a DEA agent who takes his team to raid a drug lord's mansion. When they find a buttload of cash there, they skim a little off the top for themselves and hide it down a pipe. But when the team goes back to retrieve it, it's gone. This movie is one massive whodunit, but in the goriest way possible. As the plot advances, members of the team get killed off in various gruesome ways, including getting run over by a train, being killed in a gunfight, and getting nailed to the ceiling and disemboweled. This is all just as intense as it sounds, and those who expect to go into this movie with some typical, mostly bloodless Schwarzenegger-style gunfights will probably be surprised at the level of blood and guts in this movie. Not really a complaint, as they do serve the story... more of an observation. It was interesting to see Arnie in a film that at times felt more like a horror movie than an action flick.

As for Schwarzenegger himself, his performance is actually quite good. He still has the inexplicable Austrian-accent-on-the-Mexico-border thing going against him, of course, but he really does show a wide range of emotion in this movie. As a side note: Seriously, why is it that whenever a movie like this stars Arnie, none of the characters question his accent? Just explain it away with one line of dialogue. Ignoring it is clumsy and awkward. Nevertheless, he's not pretending to be the arrogant tough guy he once was, and instead is more of a broken man, susceptible to greed and revenge. His wife and son were killed by the cartel, and he really shows it in a couple scenes. He gives a lot of human life to this character for a guy who is most famous for playing an emotionless robot, and for that, he has my approval.

The rest of the cast, however, doesn't help him out very much. Sam Worthington is in this movie, for one. Yes, you heard that right. Sam "I-didn't-think-he'd-ever-work-again-after-Avatar" Worthington actually got hired by someone in Hollywood. Ridiculous. I don't think I need to detail what an immensely bad actor this man is, because by now, everyone with half a brain gets it. The other members of Arnie's team are less of characters than they are Call of Duty callsigns. They have names like "Sugar," "Grinder," "Tripod," and "Pyro." Hell, with a team this generic, they could have benefitted from a little Maverick, Iceman, and Goose.

Olivia Williams is somewhat strong as the lead opposite Schwarzenegger, an investigator tasked with finding out what's happening to Arnie's team. Still, none of these actors, even Schwarzenegger, are quite capable of getting the script by Skip Woods to sound good. Ayer's direction almost saves it, but the story and dialogue in this movie goes considerably downhill after the first few scenes. Most of the team consists of misogynistic, wife beater-clad sub-morons, making it very difficult to sympathize with them when they start getting killed off. Their dialogue with Williams made me almost want to kill them myself. And the ending (although I'll admit, it surprised me) was probably the product of Woods panicking and trying to figure out how to end it as quickly as possible. The plot twist is good, but it's handled very poorly. Unfortunately, I can't really say why it irked me so much without giving spoilers, and because this is a watchable film, I won't ruin it for anyone.

Final Score for Sabotage: 4/10 stars. I wanted to like this movie a whole lot more, believe me. But even with good direction and a strong lead performance, the movie eventually became way too burdened-down with bludgeoning violence, stock characters, and a stupid script that just wouldn't quit disappointing me at every turn. If you're a big fan of either Ayer or Arnie, you'll probably have the same reaction I had to this movie, praising them but balking at the rest of the production. I don't know if this makes it worthy of recommendation just to see their contributions to the movie, but for what it's worth, I'm glad I watched it. It's better than last year's Escape Plan, and far better than the dismissive RT reviews led me to believe.