Sabotage

Sabotage follows a team of grizzled DEA agents (including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Breacher, Sam Worthington’s Monster, and Josh Holloway’s Neck) as they’re methodically picked off one by one after a botched operation, with the movie detailing the survivors’ efforts at discerning the identity of the individual behind the increasingly brutal killings. Filmmaker David Ayer has infused Sabotage with precisely the sort of gritty feel with which he’s associated, and there’s little doubt that the movie, in its early stages, comes off as an entertaining (yet decidedly silly) tough-guy action picture. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that Ayer has stacked the film’s cast with an assortment of appreciatively familiar faces, with Schwarzenegger’s typically charming turn matched by a roster of supporting players that includes Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, and Mireille Enos. Problems ensue as it becomes more and more clear that virtually all of the movie’s protagonists are unlikable, Type A blowhards, which ensures, to an increasingly confounding degree, that there’s just nobody here to root for. (Even Schwarzenegger’s hard-edged character is awfully difficult to sympathize with, ultimately.) The less-than-involving atmosphere is exacerbated by a narrative that is, more often than not, needlessly convoluted, and it’s certainly a challenge to figure out the motivations of several key figures (ie why is the killer doing what he/she is doing?) By the time the anticlimactic, tacked-on finale rolls around, Sabotage has unquestionably confirmed its place as a disappointingly misguided actioner that could (and should) have been so much better.

** out of ****