It's been a while since i posted a review, thankfully i found a job after six months of unemployment so my my time has been taken up by that and the fact i just finished all 208 episodes of How I Met Your Mother, but here i am, refreshed and ready to rock so....listen all ya'll this is SABOTAGE....
The following review does feature SPOILERS so if you don't want to find out what happens, read my review of Savage Beach, the one with boobies.....
Time for an action
movie review for you lucky people. Last night I had the pleasure of
watching a film i'd been itching to see since the first photo was
released at the beginning of 2013, the photo showed a tattooed Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing a combat vest and holding a big fat shotgun.
He had a name badge with the word Breacher on it (the film was at one
point called Breacher, before that it was TEN), it got me pumped for
a hard core Arnie action flick, a proper old school violent shoot 'em
up we hadn't seen Arnie do since True Lies back in 1994. So listen
all Ya'll this is my review SABOTAGE!
SABOTAGE follows a
unit of DEA agents, A special operations unit who go deep cover and
kick a lot of ass but, like most “cop” movies, the team has
become corrupt over the years and on a particular raid on a drug
cartel mansion, they discover a fuck load of cash. They rip off
$10mil but when they return to collect it, the money's gone. Internal
Affairs realize that the ten mill is missing and put the team on lock
down, now missions, basic suspension until the case is closed.
Arnold's character, the leader of the team is stuck at a desk while
the others horse around back at the unit HQ. When the suspension is
lifted and the guys get back into business, they find that someone is
killing the team off one by one in search of the money. This is where
the original title, TEN, would have made more sense as this is
essentially an update of Agatha Christi's classic mystery novel, And
Then There Were None, filmed multiple times as Ten Little Indians
about a party of people who arrive on an island and find themselves
being killed off one by one by an unseen killer, so naturally, the
team become suspicious of each other, who's killing the team? While
they fight amongst themselves, the murders are being investigated by
a female homicide detective who unwittingly finds herself allied with
Breacher and drawn into the murky world of undercover DEA agents and
Mexican Cartels.
Unfortunately
Sabotage has a lot flaws. It's not like the previous Arnold films
like The Last Stand and Escape Plan which are automatically excepted
as flawed but great popcorn fodder but Sabotage comes from an
acclaimed director and writer, Training Day writer and End Of Watch
director David Ayer. Now this might not be Ayers fault that the film
is flawed, the script is credited to both Ayer and Skip Woods, Woods
is the man responsible for killing the Die Hard franchise with his
horrible Live Free Or Die Hard script, his rather terrible Hitman
script and for ballsing up the Max Payne script along with LFODH
director, John Moore. Sabotage has it's issues, the characters have
stock Call Of Duty names like Monster, Breacher, Neck, Grinder,
Sugar, Pyro and Tripod. There's just no imagination there, these are
stock character names you'd expect in a shitty Steven Seagal DTV
action film. So where did the film go wrong?, From doing some
research on the film, it seems Sabotage was sabotaged by producers
who insisted Ayer cut the film to focus more on the action and less
on the plot seeing as this was Schwarzenegger vehicle. It appears
that Ayer's original cut was closer to three hours than the 109
minutes that were released to theatres. Apparently the film featured
much more character development and longer action sequences, this
editing of the film probably explains some of the awkward editing
that appears in the film and how Terrance Howard's character does
nearly fuck all for the first 70 minutes and turns out to be one of
the main antagonists towards the end so i'm guessing there was a
whole back story to his character. Other characters are introduced
yet nothing is known about them like Josh Holloway's character
“Neck”, who as it seems, is Breacher's second in command at the
start and Sam Worthington's “Monster”, who has the look and
appearance of an ex-con/drug dealer/gang member with his tear tattoo
and his “Vato” look, how did he end up like this, we know he was
deep cover at one point but we know nothing about him except that
he's married to Mireille Enos' Lizzy character, again another
character we no absolutely nothing about at the start, we know she
has some form of drug addiction but that's about it. There's too much
that isn't explained and knowing Ayer's writing style, it's not
something you expect from him, which also explains the massive
cutting that Ayer had to do, all the stuff I mentioned is probably in
the hour Ayer cut.
The cast do do their
best though although being a huge fan of the show LOST I would have
like to have seen Holloway in a bit more than just 25 minutes. But
his character is intriguing and he ins't given long enough to show
off his acting. Max Martini is another who was underused and had a
decent character that wasn't explained, we know he was a former Navy
seal but that's about it. One actor who does get much more screen
time is Joe Manganiello as Grinder. His hulking, tattooed, corn
rolled, bearded badass is pretty awesome and while again we know
nothing about his character he still gives a pretty good performance.
Sam Worthington is unrecognisable in his role as monster, his
performance is pretty good too, probably his best performance since
voicing Alex Mason in Call Of Duty Black Ops, although he's
responsible for one scene of exposition which gives us a bit of a
back story on Breacher. Olivia Williams plays the cop investigating
the deaths of the team members and she manages to hold her own
spectacularly against an ensemble cast of incredibly manly men and
her American accent is spot on. I've always been a fan of Williams
ever since Kevin Costner's woefully under-appreciated
Post-apocalyptic masterpiece, The Postman. Terrance Howard is
probably the most wasted character and actor in the film, an academy
award nominated actor with fantastic roles in everything from Crash,
Hustle & Flow and the upcoming HBO series, Empire, and he's
relegated to basically sitting in a chair for most of the film, until
he's revealed as one of the killers towards the end, my biggest
casting issue though is Mireille Enos as Lizzy, the character is a
badass, yes we get that but she over acts throughout the entire film
and it comes across as hammy and really drags an already flawed film
down. Orginally Malin Akerman was cast as Lizzy but had to drop out
due to pregnancy but it makes me wonder if she would have played down
the crazy or someone like Amber Heard or even Cobie Smolders may
have underplayed the character so it didn't appear so over the top
but let's face it folks, the selling point of this film is Arnie, the
dude has played everything from a killer robot, a Russian cop, a
pregnant man and the last action hero, so we know why we're watching
the film. Has his acting improved since his return to films? Most
definitely, Breacher is much more mature character than his previous
character and while he may not be as badass as Harry Tasker, Breacher
is still a veteran ass kicker. Arnie's performance is the best of his
most recent films, there are some shaky moments but haven't there
always been, don't get me wrong I loved both The Last Stand and
Escape Plan but here Arnie is more mature, more dramatic than we've
seen him before and his performance is good, however, it gets even
better when you put a gun in his hand and have him kill people,
that's the Arnie we know and he does these scenes like a pro. He's
getting better folks, just keep watching his films.
Speaking of action,
the action of Sabotage has a realistic edge to them, something Ayer
does exceptionally well, the military style raids and assaults all
feel authentic as Ayer himself served in the Marines so will have
first hand knowledge of this. We know Ayer can handle action scenes
brilliantly, we just have to look at his directorial efforts, Harsh
Times, Street Kings, End Of Watch and Sabotage are some of the best
action films of the last 10 years because the well staged and
executed actions scenes. The car chase at the end is also well staged
and ends with a great homage to the brilliant 70s cop thriller, The
Seven-Ups. I like the different types of action we get in cinema
these days, you have the big city wide action scenes we see in the
Marvel movies, the OTT 80s style action we see in films like The
Expendables, the brilliant hand to hand combat of films like The
Raid, Taken and the Bourne films and then the grittier 70s style of
realistic violent action we see in films like the aforementioned
David Ayer films and stuff like Zero Dark Thirty and Act Of Valour.
After the first 40
minutes, which are bit messy and confusing due to some bad editing
choices that get a bit confusing, Ayer does the best thing he could
do to salvage the film, turn it into a fast paced, straight up chase
film which is where the film really does start to get better. It's
hard to make an original action film that tries to be clever and
Sabotage fails at the task due to the missing hour cut from the film
but it succeeds due to some good performances and some brilliant
action sequences. Sabotage is by no means a great film, it doesn't
touch on the awesomeness of Ayer's previous End Of Watch but it
succeeds in the switch of brain for some badass gun battles and car
chases department. All in all if you get past the first 40 minutes
you'll be rewarded with a fun action film. I think in it's
current 109 minute state, Sabotage gets a 3 from this guy...
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