Sabotage - Danny's review

I'm a massive Arnie fan. I just had a look on IMDB and the only Schwarzenegger films I've not seen are a TV movie from 1980 and his two post-governorship comeback films: The Last Stand with Johnny Knoxville and Escape Plan with Sylvester Stallone. I've not seen these two as I've been ignoring his comeback so far, until I couldn't resist Sabotage. It proved to be a bit of a disappointment.

It's a shame as Arnie gets a plumb role as the captain of a DEA attack squad. It's acknowledged by his team that he's a bit older, and he is a father figure to them all. He's rugged but approachable. The premise of the film is quite interesting too. The DEA squad decide its time to get paid, and after a typically violent drug bust on a cartel they steal $10 million for themselves. But one of the team double crosses them all and the money disappears. There's an internal investigation which reveals nothing, and the rest of the film is spent in mild suspense wondering who did it and why. Then the team start dying one by one, and Arnie teams up with a cop to investigate.

Arnie's team all have nicknames and have a lot of macho banter. The most exciting one is the woman, who is extremely feisty. In fact considering its a film aimed at boys the women have quite good roles throughout.

David Ayer previously directed End of Watch and wrote Training Day and makes a good cop drama. Everyone is dirty, even Arnie for a change. Here they're actually more army than cops, and there's a lot of special operations. These mostly consist of someone pushing open a door and screaming "Cover me!" or "Breach!" then the rest coming through. They go through a lot of doors like this, and it's no surprise Arnie's tough guy nickname is Breacher, presumably because he breaches so many doors. If you hate closed doors, you'll like this movie.

The plot details gradually become clear in quite a steady way which I like. There's no dramatic reveal. Unfortunately, the character motivations are totally at odds with how they behave. This is a shame, as if the mystery of who dunnit was well handled this would be the sort of film that would reward a second watch. As it is, I'm scared to even think about all the things that don't make sense.

Of course any film with Arnie in is primarily an Arnie film, and as I've said he's on poor form. This pretty much cripples the film. He's got weird eyebrows and a haircut that makes him look like a boy from the 1950s. He's quite hard to understand, and at one point when he tells another cop that they "like cups" I thought he'd said "like caps" which also made no sense. If he uses any sort of slang it's hard to work it out. And worst of all is when Arnie delivers a tough guy swearing bit, he speaks so slowly it just sounds awful and there's no zing at all. However, all this is very nearly redeemed with a very cool final section, which is strongly reminiscent of his underrated 2002 film Collateral Damage [Edit - I called it Collateral by mistake the first time]

Overall then, a bit of a disappointment, but seeing Arnie's face again did lift my spirits. Finally it's worth noting there are no acts of sabotage at any point in the film.