Arnold Schwarzenegger stars a DEA agent looking to keep himself and his team alive in the action film Sabotage. We have our review right here.
Take David Ayer, the director behind the excellent Training Day and End of Watch, add in a bit of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the biggest action film star of all time, and what do you get? A slop of a movie. Sabotage sounds great on paper, a team of DEA agents who take on the drug cartels, decide to take $10 million for themselves during a bust, only for the money to go missing, and then one-by-one each member starts to be brutally murdered. Yet the end result is so bad, you’d be lucky (or unlucky) to make it through to the end credits.
What is the real problem with the film? Well the acting isn’t great – barring Sam Worthington and Mireille Enos who actually look and perform great. Yet the real problem is certainly the script. Right from the beginning the viewer is hit with some ridiculous dialogue. Grown men talking about farting. Grown men talking about excrement. Grown men talking about tits. It felt like it was wrote by a twelve year old.
The plot was basically a modernised version of Agatha Christie’s ‘Ten Little Indians’. In fact, before the producers changed the name of the movie to Sabotage, it was actually called Ten.
The overall look of the film isn’t bad, with Ayer opting to go with the shaky cam throughout and it suited the mood nicely, but the action set-pieces were poor and unfulfilling.
It’s a shame to write such a scathing review, as I have loved Arnold Schwarzenegger films throughout my life. I never tire of watching such films as Predator, Commando, True Lies, Red Heat, The Terminator and its sequel. But this was atrocious. Let’s hope he can return to form before it’s too late.