Sabotage

I cannot help but wonder if this movie would have gotten better reviews if Schwarzenegger had not been cast in the lead role. I get the feeling that people had certain expectations due to the choice of actor. In any case, the ridiculously low one and two star ratings are rubbish. They are utterly undeserved as far as I am concerned. Personally, I quite liked the movie. Sure it is not Oscar material and it will not go on any of my top ten lists but I found it rather enjoyable to watch. Schwarzy is not young any more so you should not expect him to play roles as he did at the height of his career before he made the unfortunate decision to wade into the dirty waters of politics. Still he performed quite alright in the various action scenes in this movie. And there are a fair amount of action in the movie as well as a fair amount of blood substitute. It is not really an all out action movie though and the story that underpins the action have a certain amount of drama in it. I would say that the actors in general are doing a god job of their roles. The drug enforcement team looks more like a biker gang than a police team but then, to work undercover in the world of the drug cartels you really have to be part crazy. There are no young sexy chicks in this movie, unless you count a few scenes in bars and strip clubs. Actually the two female lead characters can be said to be downright ugly which may be another reason why some people of the younger audience give the movie a low rating although that is of course pure speculation on my part :-) . In any case, I think the choice of female characters fits perfectly well with the rest of the movie (as well as Schwarzy’s age). The story is a mix of the fairly classical one of revengeful drug cartels and incompetent FBI directors with a bit of a twist from the money heist and the disappearing money. The implementation might be a wee bit imperfect at times but to me it was a good enough story. I did like the ending with the classical shoot out in the bar although I also did consider taking a star off due to the tragic last few scenes. What can I say? I am a sucker for happy endings.

**A hopeless mess from start to finish, unfortunately.** This is not a good film, not even to watch with your buddies while drinking beer (which I did). It has some promise in its premise, and at one point we actually wanted to know how the actual betrayal was done, but that feeling soon vanished. I personally think that Arnold does a decent job with what he has to work with, the rest of the actors are pretty atrocious though. Sam Worthington is the best of the rest but that isn't saying much. Pair this with some of the most clichéd, over-the-top, obnoxious personalities ever put on film and sprinkle some next level cringeworthy dialogue on top and you have a recipe for characters you will actively despise. We actually cheered when they got killed off. The biggest flaw of the movie is the editing though. As I mentioned we really wanted to be invested in this movie but either the director or the editor was really hung-over - or possibly still drunk - when they cut this movie. Multiple scenes and situations made less than no sense, and the final nail in the coffin was the realization that the inciting moment, the very reason the entire movie exists, was so badly edited that none of us understood what actually had happened until it was explained by a character much later. The final ten minutes of the movie made it painfully clear that it wouldn't have mattered if we had understood it, or anything really, as the "twist" (I wish I could use even bigger quotation marks) is both underwhelming and as twisted as metal ruler. You get no explanation of how the betrayal is done, no explanation why the events that are portrayed in the movie ever take place, nor why the characters act the way they did. Honestly though, it's our own fault to expect any sort of arc or depth to characters that probably has fewer than two lines of description in the script. It made for some relatively entertaining moments though when all of a sudden characters acted even more erratic and confusing than usual. It became a game of sorts to try and figure out if this was because one or more scenes were cut or if the writer/director actually was that incompetent. The one redeeming quality of this movie is that they took their blood and splatter of said blood seriously. There are a couple of almost intense moments solely due to some realistic gore. There isn't enough to entice any fans of gore and splatter to watch this though. Give this one a pass unless you're really acing for some sub-par action with a mediocre performance from Arnold.

'Sabotage' is almost watchable, but it just falls short of being that in my eyes. It does have issues. I didn't really enjoy Arnold Schwarzenegger in this, but his performance does improve slightly as the film goes on. Mireille Enos isn't the best, nor are any of her co-stars behind Arnie to be honest - Sam Worthington and Olivia Williams are alright, more miss than hit though. This 2014 flick also feels like an all too obvious attempt to replicate 'The Expendables' from four years prior (or same year, going by TE3), at least until the ending - where I feel like it does something else. Speaking of the conclusion though, it all felt a bit rushed and not well developed. Another negative is that all the characters are unlikeable, even across the first chunk when the film seems to want them to be. Those are numerous criticisms, evidently, and would usually equal a lower rating from myself. However, as noted at the top, it is almost something I could just sit back and watch, without thinking too much about it. I'm all for so-called 'switch off your brain' flicks, but this doesn't quite reach that level in my opinion.