It would be far too easy to say Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest movie, Sabotage, has been sabotaged. The actor who defined the action movie genre isn’t exactly on steady ground when it comes to his comeback. But when you hear that his latest movie is being directed by David Ayer who wrote Training Day and directed and wrote End Of Watch, you would have put a bottle of champagne on ice. Well, don’t run off for a bottle of bubbly just yet!
Sabotage really has been sabotaged. Sorry. There I said it. Lets get that elephant out of the room.Members of an elite DEA task force find themselves being taken out after they rob a drug cartel safe house. Standard, no brainer action movie and with Ayer directing it should have some soul too? Nope. Sabotage has a number of stories running throughout and none of them gel together in any kind of fashion. This is a movie with a bunch of scenes just hobbled together and you’d find more flow in a blocked toilet.
If you turned the amount of plot holes into a drinking game, you’d be dead with alcohol poisoning before the finale. While you can forgive how Arnie manages to magically conjure up a flashlight in one scene, you can’t really forgive a car crash in the finale. Said car is trundling along at say 40mph and when it crashes into a truck it’s going about ten times the speed of sound. It’s this lack of attention to detail (which is peppered throughout) that only adds to the calamity that this is.
Arnie seems to struggle throughout the entire movie. Let’s be honest, audiences don’t expect an Oscar worthy performance from The Terminator, and neither should David Ayer. There is more than a handful of scenes with Arnie here, that will have you smashing the palm of your hand into your face. And a particular love scene with the Austrian Oak is as contrived as you’ll find. Arnie is at his best with big action scenes and hefty one liners, neither of which feature prominently here. And while the finale is as cheesy as hell, it might give some satisfaction to Arnie fans, its of little consolation. With a supporting cast that offer little than taking up space on the screen, you are left with an almighty clusterfuck of a movie. Terrence Howard, Josh Holloway, Joe Manganiello and Max Martini while looking the part, do nothing to alleviate the boredom that will inevitably set in. Sam Worthington, who turned up for a hair cut, does provide some relief and looks like the only one who decided to do a half days work. But it’s really Olivia Williams, who plays a homicide detective, that takes the biscuit. She has the personality of a blanket that a dog died on and when is about as convincing as a glass hammer. She is truly woeful and is the icing on a big shit cake.
It’s hard to tell what’s gone wrong here. Ayer is a talented individual. It seems that the movie he wrote and wanted to make is not really present. Instead we have multiple movies all squeezed into the 109 minute running time and none of it works. By all accounts the original running time was 3 hours and according to David Ayer himself, the movie was heavily cut by the studio of delivering a more action based film. Obviously this is one delivery that got lost in transit! Which may well be true. It’s hard to fathom how he turned in this considering his past body of work. But, excuses are only bullshit when you have parted with your hard earned cash.
As much as I idolise Arnie, Sabotage is an absolutely brutal piece of film making and one of the worst movies he has ever been involved with. Unless you fancy sabotaging your night at the cinema, avoid this!
