Who Do You Trust?

Sabotage

Remember the days when police officers were depicted on film and TV as always the good guys. Police officers were the “Boys in Blue” and they ALWAYS saved the day. Somewhere in the past 15 years I think that we, as a people, have really lost sight of that. Now our police detectives/officers are part time drug dealers (Denzel Washington Training Day), kidnappers (Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris Gone Baby Gone), and racists (Matt Dillon Crash).  Now Universal is trying to add to the mix with this year’s actioner Sabotage.

John ‘Breacher’ Wharton (Arnold Schwarzenegger) leads an elite team of undercover DEA agents and is chosen to take out a cartel mansion, seizing all assets. Breacher and his team have a different view of all assets, stealing $10 million dollars from said cartel. However, when the team goes back for their payday, they find someone has beaten them to their hard earned cash. Now the DEA is investigating Breacher and his team for the missing money, but things get a little more complicated when Breacher’s team members start dying. With the aid of an Atlanta police detective (Olivia Williams The Sixth Sense), Breacher much piece together where his money went and who is killing off his team.

Okay so this film would have been great if two things would have happened. First…recast Arnold. Arnold needs to retire and try and go out gracefully. His last few movies have failed miserably and now he is portraying himself as stubborn. His action movie career was over before he became governor and hasn’t gotten better since (The Last Stand is a great example of the post political career). I would have pick Arnold’s buddy Bruce Willis for the role of Breacher. Secondly, make the movie a little bit longer. This movie is 1hr and 45mins long and the story really doesn’t get interesting until 1hr 15mins. It felt like the director or the producers noticed they had a time limit and was coming close so they wrapped up the movie.  If someone would have expanded the movie and let it come together on its own then then film would have been great. The film starts off as an action film, slides into a murder mystery, and then comes crashing back to an action film. But the first transition was so smooth that I didn’t notice until the murder investigation started. Then it slams you back into the action to end the film.

The supporting cast holds this movie more than the main actor does.  Sam Worthington (New Clash of the Titans), Josh Holloway (LOST), Joe Manganiello (True Blood), Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow), Max Martini (TV’s The Unit), and Mireille Enos (World War Z) make up Breacher’s team and they all do an amazing job carrying the weight of this movie. Each one has great moments in this film that stand out from the rest of the team like Worthington’s vocal fight with Arnold and Enos’ scenes in the beginning. The first example I picked because it shows how Worthington can stand up to Arnold and hold his own in his scenes by voice and presence. I mention Enos’ scenes for the pure fact that they are so far from her calm demeanor from World War Z and the TV show The Killing. This film gave her more range.

Mister corrupt cop film director himself, David Ayer (Training Day, End of Watch) dons the directing cap for this one. I will say that I do like Ayer’s films, but this one just didn’t seem like he had his whole heart into it. As mentioned before, the film just comes to a screeching end and we the audience is left wanting a little more. I do recommend his other films, so if you do happen to watch this film, don’t judge Ayer too harshly. Check out End of Watch (if you haven’t already) to make up for this film.

Arnold has struggled to get audiences to the theatre for a little while and doesn’t help himself in this film either. It’s just too bad that this film’s plot was too big for its running time; otherwise Arnold would have walked away with his first post-political winner.

Verdict: Wait For Cable