I had the chance to see this film last night, which was already getting pretty polarizing reviews; so I needed to see for myself. Continue reading to see my thoughts but be warned....
*MAJOR SPOILER WARNING AHEAD*
The film opens with a brutal video of DEA Agent John “Breacher” Wharton’s (Schwarzenegger) family being murdered by a Mexican Drug Cartel. Title card, and 8 months later we find Wharton and his team of rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ badasses (complete with call names like GRINDER and MONSTER… intimidating, right?) raiding a drug warehouse and subsequently stealing about 10 million dollars of drug money; only to find it missing when they go to retrieve it later that night. From there the team members (Sam Worthington, Terrance Howard, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Mireille Enos, and Max Martini) are systematically hunted down and picked off one by one. We get bits and pieces of who each person is; though they’re all really just grunts. Monster (Worthington) and Lizzy (Enos) are husband and wife, with Monster being the somewhat cool head to his unhinged, drug addicted wife. Grinder (Manganiello) is the young gun with potential, who blindly follows Wharton to almost certain oblivion. The first to die, ‘Pyro’, bites it after having about 4 or 5 lines total, so you can’t help but feel like “ehh, no big loss there.” Plus, actor Max Martini (Pacific Rim) is probably the least marketable of the bunch, so he may as well have been wearing a red shirt. From there, predictably, they all die in “star order” with Sam Worthington (Avatar) and Terrance Howard (Iron Man) being the last two to go. Along the way, Schwarzenegger is aided in his hunt for the hunter by FBI Agent Caroline, played by Olivia Williams, who gets awkwardly shoe-horned in to somewhat of a love interest; even though Wharton is supposed to be too distraught and broken over the loss of his family (according to a conveniently placed flashback with narration from Sam Worthington). We get the sense that the team was never quite the same since the loss of his family, and Worthington places the blame on Schwarzeneggers’ broad shoulders.
As more and more of the team are picked off in brutal ways (one member gets nailed to the ceiling and his intestines cut out), Arnold discovers more and more clues that flag the stolen money as the cause for all of it, and the cartel the ones behind it. But when the cartel hunters they believe are responsible turn up dead, there can only be one conclusion left…. It has to be one of the team members, right? Wait, what? Where did that even come from, and why? This tight knit group who are basically the only family members each other has (I know this because they say the word “family” about 100 times each). Along with the “startling revelation” that one of the team members must be responsible, we also find out that Lizzie and Sugar (Terrance Howard) have been having an affair. Until this point in the flick, Howard was 5th string at best, who honestly does NOTHING memorable until this point, so it’s another case of not caring when the filmmakers obviously want you to. That senselessness proves to be the fatal flaw to an otherwise decent crime thriller. You can’t expect an audience to care if you never gave them a reason to.
Cut to the chase: Lizzie and Sugar have been behind the whole thing, pissed that the money went missing and determined to find out who took it…. By killing them? OK sure. Wharton and Caroline chase down Sugar and Lizzie, and Sugar dies in the most overdramatic of ways. In her dying breaths, Lizzie confesses everything and tells Wharton they took “my money” only for Wharton to tell her he was actually the one to steal it. Why? To bribe a Mexican police official to find the location of his family’s killer. The film ends with Arnold in a Mexican bar, complete with sombrero, finding and killing the man responsible, leading to an unnecessary, over the top shoot out. It doesn’t feel like it belongs in this film, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an additional pick up done by an entirely different director. If you walked about before this part, you’d have been doing yourself a favor. It’s that bad.
Bottom line: Sabotage is entertaining, but only if you can completely turn your brain off and not wonder how this movie got past the editing bay with so many glaring flaws and holes. As I stated, it misses the mark too much, and that turns what could've been a great movie in to just a decent one. It’s not the worst effort from this creative team, and it by no means is the best either. David Ayer and Skip Woods will undoubtedly bounce back from this one; but what about Arnold? In a film where the supporting cast is better than the lead; it begs the question… should Arnold hang it up? Has his nostalgia value outworn its welcome?
Sabotage 3.5/5
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