Sabotage stars Arnold Schwarzenegger like we’ve never seen him before.Sabotage (2014)
Certified: 18
Duration: 109 minutes
Directed by: David Ayer
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Harold Perrineau, Martin Donovan
KRS release
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays John Wharton, aka Breacher, who leads a Drug Enforcement Agency squad in their search of one of the most important gangsters in the drug underworld. The team is made up of: husband and wife James ‘Monster’ Murray (Sam Worthington) and Lizzy (Mireille Enos), Joe ‘Grinder’ Philips (Joe Manganiello), Tom ‘Pyro’ Roberts (Max Martini), ‘Smoke’ Jennings (Mark Schleigel), Julius ‘Sugar’ Edmonds (Terrence Howard) and Bryce ‘Tripod’ McNeely (Kevin Vance).
While on a raid in a mansion, they find a huge amount of money and decide to hide millions in a toilet pipe for collection afterwards. The FBI finds out about this and follows them as they trek back to find the money is no longer there.
They are finally cleared and can go back in the field together but the team is now cracked and suspicious of each other. The matter becomes even more dangerous when members of the team start ending up dead. This piques the interest of homicide detectives Jackson and Caroline (Harold Perrineau and Olivia Williams). They are also looking into their own team to see who is targeting them and also the possibility that there could be internal sabotage.
Sabotage is a return to form for Schwarzenegger but this time it’s the Austrian Oak without the star status, without the over-the-top super-action hero pose – maybe this is why this film has been hit with so much flak. It’s Schwarz-enegger in dirty, brutal fare that spares none and shows no mercy. The advantage here is that Sabotage is not a movie vehicle for a solo star but a collective team effort whose cast really fit into their roles. They all have their nicknames, their tattoos and their military hardware; in fact, they could all be the tough soldiers that surrounded Schwarzenegger in the original Predator. But here, the danger is closer to home and also has a surprise twist.
The movie is delivered with a rawness and a rough’n’ready attitude that crosses from the preposterous to the in-your-face realism. The film is directed by David Ayer, the writer of Training Day and End of Watch, which both trod into the world of law enforcement.
In Sabotage the emphasis is once again on how the job can get the better of the cop and how the cop starts walking the fine line between law and crime. The lines become increasingly blurred. It’s in this milieu that Schwarzenegger is thrown in and for once he looks to be perfectly human.
The fact that the film does not depend solely on him also helps. Eno is nervous and on edge and Williams is perfectly tough. Of the team, it is Howard who one would expect to hog more limelight but he ends up lost in the proceedings.
Worthington is almost unrecognisable as he delivers the goods. The interesting aspect of the film is that there is no saintly hero and with few, if any, of the characters to root for, it’s Williams’s detective that grew on me as she transforms herself into some sort of butch Agatha Christie-style detective.
Overall Sabotage delivers a cop movie that is sleazy and rough in its approach and is not begging for your attention but demands it with a clenched fist.