Sabotage (2014) Review

After completing a massive drug bust at a Columbian drug cartel's place of residence, DEA captain John "Breacher" Wharton and his unit celebrate and breathe a sigh of relief. Though the man and his crew have been accused of taking money from the scene of the crime, they are oblivious to the missing evidence, and continue to celebrate on a job well done. Things start to turn sour, however, when members of John's crew start dying one by one. Is this linked with their cartel bust? Or does this have to do with something from the past that is now coming back to haunt the crew?

As I left Carmike Cinemas tonight, I came to the odd realization that this was the first Arnold Schwarzenegger-led film that I've seen in a theater as an adult. Aside from that thought making me feel very old, it also made me recall the days of yesteryear for the Austrian-American actor and former California governor. I grew up on many of the man's action and adventure films of the eighties and nineties, many of which I and my friends will defend to the death as fantastic forms of entertainment. In recent years though, he hasn't exactly been the muscled, lovable cheeseball darling of the media. For starters, an affair with a housekeeper that resulted in a divorce and previously undiscovered child, along with a very silly appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention definitely brought the "Governator" down a few pegs in the public eye.  Even if he was coming out in favor of same sex marriage or supporting the legalization of marijuana, the damage was done, and when he decided to return to full time acting in 2011, it showed at the box office intake. Thankfully, Arnold's newest picture Sabotage is coming out during the period when the audiences are pretty desperate for any form of entertainment (it's thanks to these "dry" months that we have the upcoming A Haunted House 2. *shudder*), so maybe there's hope for the man after all.


I couldn't help but feel like this was a movie with delusions of grandeur. It wants to tell the audience that it's full of intrigue, with a great "whodunnit" theme felt throughout every mood swing, but the problem is that any viewer, be they casual or hardcore, has seen it all before. Heck, most audiences have seen this in different genres for crying out loud. The film starts out slightly similar to one of Arnold's older classics from the 1980s, the science fiction piece Predator, with a sizable team of loud, boisterous, and somewhat one-note characters taking down a large threat with deadly force and surprising brutality. Within no amount of time, something comes up that leads to the team being mysteriously killed off in very violent ways. However, it shifts into the territory of motion pictures like Identity or Scream, with the remaining faces and figures trying to unravel a mystery that may hold secrets to a certain character's past. If this sounds like something worth watching, it damn well is. However, Sabotage isn't the film that you're looking for which will combine these elements into something that flows smoothly.


For starters, as macho or comical as some of the characters in the aforementioned films might be, they were wholly memorable or relatable. You could recall what it was that made you like someone such as Predator's Dutch or Billy, or even Scream's Sidney Prescott. Nobody in Sabotage, save for arguably Schwarzenegger's leader "Breach," has anything distinguishable about them, and Breach is the only individual who is given a background and reason for doing what he does (mostly thanks to one five minute-long scene of exposition). As for his crew? Well, they're mostly a lineup of the "who's who" of police and crime pictures. There's the female (The Killing's Mireille Enos), the black guy (Hustle & Flow's Terrence Howard), the man who looks like a rejected member of the Wyatt Family (True Blood's Joe Manganiello), and the other white, bald, occasionally tattooed men. Oh, and Sam Worthington (Avatar) is in there somewhere as well. Every member of Breach's task force is just a lousy, irritating cliche, and you wonder why they're trying to tell the audience that you have to feel bad when any of them bites the dust. Arnold also interacts with a mostly flat female F.B.I. agent played by Olivia Williams (Rushmore), but you'd never know that she's with the Bureau since they are portrayed as being completely worthless or just plain inept at their job. Apparently the DEA are the be all, end all of badassery, and other forces are insignificant puny worms. Maybe I could blame this on the script needing some work, but I think that I've used that copout too much in previous reviews.


Speaking of the script, I suppose that I should have done my research about it beforehand. The poster for Sabotage is a blatant lie, as this was actually a joint effort by director David Ayer and a man named Skip Woods. Ayer's track record is mostly positive, lying in the crime and police drama genres with pictures like Training Day and S.W.A.T. Skip Woods, on the other hand, is the man who helped bring such memorable duds as Hitman and X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the big screen. I'd be willing to suspect that most of the latter's influence is what made it through to the final product. Thankfully, some of the script isn't completely limp. For the very, very brief moments of comedy that there are, Arnold makes a few lines work that would normally fall flat in the hands of others (I'll be waiting for an isolated clip of him spouting "Is that a dick?" to pop up online). As much time as I've spent on blasting the script's weaknesses, it does possess a certain hook that will keep you from tuning out of the product completely. Maybe that's just part of the Arnold charm though. I mean honestly, can you name a film starring the man that you've flat out turned off and never finished? Well, outside of his late-90s pictures. And Red Sonja. And Last Action Hero. And any comedy he did not called Jingle All The Way or Twins…...You know what? Let me retract that last question and move on.


I can't really fault anybody for wanting to see Sabotage, as it really isn't a terrible movie per se, but I just didn't come away feeling particularly impressed by anything that I saw (even the action sequences are brought down by erratic cinematography). While the nostalgic Arnold Schwarzenegger fan in me hopes that it does well at the box office (at least until Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out next week), solely so that the man will continue to be in demand, it falls more into the dreaded category of "Meh." Since all of the negatives outweigh the positives, and the negatives aren't even offensively bad, this might serve as the definition of a Redbox rental. I would certainly think that paying anything more than six dollars to see it would be a stunningly bad mistake.



 But on the plus side, it's infinitely more watchable than Batman and Robin.