The Governator’s war on drugs

Sabotage

Director: David Ayer

Writers: Skip Woods, David Ayer

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Max Martini, Mireille Enos, Olivia Williams

Runtime: 109 minutes

Certification: 15

Rating: 2/5

The director of End of Watch (an interesting take on police films that didn’t quite succeed) combining with one of two classic 80s action heroes suffering a string of mediocre to terrible films certainly sounds like a recipe for what could either be an interesting addition to the world of action films, or yet another ball of badly written and choppily edited action scenes that may or may not be related to one another. Sabotage’s opening suggests it could manage to be something like the former, offering a grim excuse for Arnie to showcase his acting chops (nothing special, but the fact he’s allowed to flex them at all is cause for celebration), before immediately kicking into top gear as Arnie’s team blow open a cartel mansion.

The violence on screen pushes the limits of the film’s 15 certificate, adopting a The Raid-lite approach to carnage with plenty of gore and bullets doing actual damage (even if there is a significant case of bad henchman aim), joining the likes of Lone Survivor in ‘grittily real action films’, albeit with slightly more of a sense of humour, however unintentional said humour may be.

Certainly, the actual ‘humour’ on display is (mostly) somewhat sub-par, with the one-liners falling flat and the banter between the team members alternating between nasty and dull, with the real joy to be found in the way Sabotage gleefully ticks off every box it can think of on the list of action movie clichés. There’s an element of the whole thing being played with a straight face (and at times the tone of the script seems to be demanding it is), but it’s just too ridiculous to truly be ‘realistic’ (unlike _Lone Survivor, _which abandoned all humour in the name of brutal realism) and it knows it. Military jargon abounds, with all the clichéd phrases you’d expect being yelled out at every opportunity – the cast seem to know what kind of film they’re making, even if the script doesn’t.

The cast are, in fact, probably the best thing about the whole film, especially Arnie, who gives what is easily his best performance in years as the under-fire leader of the team coping with a horrifying loss. The team as a whole suffer slightly from a lack of in-depth characterisation, with most of the work being delegated to their appearance and nicknames, meaning their deaths are less affecting for the audience than they are for the team, and there’s a weird feeling about the way the film handles its female characters that’s a little hard to shake or pin down (both the main females are strong, driven and capable of winning their battles, which is good, but there’s no real sense of respect and they’re either vilified or used by the male characters).

The plot does itself no favours, although it does at least manage to avoid some of the obvious pitfalls or potential story options (mainly by just splitting up one cliché into two, which is honestly about as clever as this film gets), but it’s an entertaining enough ride if you can overlook the fact that it’s built on one massive, very singular, very (very, very, very) impossible contrivance that could not, in any way, happen (I’d say that you should play a game of ‘spot the contrivance’ but it’s so glaringly obvious I might as well just give a prize to everyone). Suffice to say: I spent almost all of the film wondering whether I’d missed something really important in the first ten minutes (I hadn’t, I checked). With a bit more thought, a bit more time, and someone actually standing up and going ‘this is rubbish, come up with something better’, Sabotage could have been pretty good. As it is, it just sort of is. Which I guess does the trick.