Review of Sabotage (2014) by Liam C — 08 Jul 2014

Straight from frame one there is a very clear image of foreboding for what lies ahead, needlessly violent spectacle. Sabotage offers viewers a very dark performance from Arnold Schwarzenegger but not really much of anything else.

Right from the start I got the impression that the movie really wanted to be a realistic as can be portrayal of the DEA and what they go through, the story doesn't really enforce this at all as we come to learn later on but from a purely visual perspective, at first, it seems pretty legitimate and looks the part greatly but as you will soon learn, perhaps too much. Then someone fired a gun and I saw how much blood was left on the door from where they were shot and then I knew what kind of movie I was getting into here. It tried to be realistic but because of this and how everybody acts it's a very exaggerated realistic with characters swearing literally every second, I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of the script was the word fuck. After 40 minutes I wanted out.

It doesn't help also that pretty much everyone in the entire movie is unlikable, the main characters are foul mouthed, unpleasant, underdeveloped, unruly, immature and disgusting people. For example, they go into a nightclub, cause a bunch of commotion, annoy some girls and then beat up the security for trying to stop them and these are the people we're supposed to be rooting for? I couldn't wait for each one of these people to get killed off in one of the many overly graphic ways they show us. Everyone besides Arnold, Olivia Williams and Harold Perrineau are horrible. The reason these three get off lightly is because Arnold actually has a backstory to him and a reason for the things he does, we learn about his character and who he is. The other two are just likeable because they're not any of the other people, Perrineau is just a likeable person anyway and Williams was a good strong character and had things to do as well. Your movie has to be really bad to make Terrence Howard unlikable. Really? You have all these characters and you're not going to tell us a thing about them? All I ended up doing was oh, it's Sam Worthington, oh look it's Terrence Howard.

With a story like this, or whatever I could gather from a needlessly convoluted script, you need likeable characters to actually care about what happens to them. Arnold's character talks about how the whole team is like a family and that he would take a bullet for them, seeing as how they all treat each other like trash and how they all act like criminals, I really couldn't believe this or care about them and thus the story, if it can so be called, falls flat. After you find out who was behind it all you're more than likely going to hate them all more and feel even angrier to probably the worst character in the movie. Sam Worthington's character at one point states that Arnold's character is the life of the team and he ain't lying. Given that it's Arnie there's very little not to like about him but, again, he's the only one you know anything about so it keeps you interested to see what he will do next.

It's not all bad though, some of the gun fights are fun to watch for what they are, the bullets pop and everything looks authentic besides some very odd POV shots that are blurry and give you a headache. There are a few flashback scenes where it really shows that the DEA team actually cared for one another and do work together well, it just shows what this movie could have been if it had a different script writer, I mean really, Skip Woods? I liked Swordfish because of how goofy it was but he just feels out of place for this and I'm not sure if he's even real. There are some funny scenes and dialogue pieces at some point to give us a break from the overwhelmingly brutal violence that the movie offers and by the end the only other character to actually have any sympathy for is Sam Worthington's and he does a good job, for what it's worth.

A less needlessly complicated plot, less violence, less swearing and better characters and this could have been really good or at least an entertaining time waster but as it stands it's an overly violent, unpleasant mess. It's not like I think I'm above a bit of running n gunning, no, I love a good old action film but this movie never misses a chance to show blood or a severed body piece- and lots of it and with not much else to grab on to, the movie isn't really that good. It's just a poor mix of a filmmaker who makes realistic films and a writer who really abused this to just make a really violent movie that doesn't make sense for all the wrong reasons. The tomatometer was kind to the story here. Arnold is probably one of the only reasons anyone will pay attention to this and one of the only reasons to actually have any investment in what's happening on screen. If viewers are willing to deal with this movie, you'll be rewarded by a very good lead performance.