Movie Review by ROGER MOORE, of McClatchy Newspapers
Arnold Schwarzenegger doesnt strut through action films these days. And no amount of editing can hide that, no, grandpa cant kick doors down any more. Or fake it.
Even his line-readings have a fatigue that suggests hes kind of over it.
Aye trust you mitt my life! Ve are still a family!
A once-bulky big boy of Hollywoods steroid era, these days he just lumbers into scenes, chomping a cigar, and tries to let the younger, bigger actors carry the load.
Especially in Sabotage, a stupidly titled actioner that, like its star, lumbers along between shoot-outs, gory crime scenes and glib, off-color one-liners. This dark turn in the Arnie oeuvre is by the guy who did Training Day and End of Watch. But watching this head-slappingly stupid movie is an exercise is seeing director David Ayer sucked into the drain that Arnolds been spiraling down ever since his comeback.
Schwarzenegger plays John Breacher Wharton, the head of a DEA Special Operations Team, a gonzo gang of buff thugs with big guns and cute nicknames that they trot out in every slow-footed operation they mount.
When we meet Breacher, Monster (Sam Worthington) and his macho wife, Lizzy (Mireille Enos), Sugar (Terrence Howard) and Grinder (Joe Manganiello), along with Tripod, Neck, Pryo and Smoke, theyre shooting their way into an Atlanta mansion run by a drug lord. And theyre robbing him.
They stash the cash, but it disappears. Their bosses know theres missing money. A long investigation (lots of grainy interrogation video) later, nobodys charged. They get off with a scolding: The only thing anybody in law enforcement has is their credibility.
Thatll teach em. But then, the members of the team start meeting gruesome, spectacular deaths by train, by nail gun. The movie spares us nothing, from the crime scenes to the grisly autopsies.
An Atlanta cop, played by British actress Olivia Williams (An Education) slinging a Georgia accent, may be out of her depth. But she persists in trying to get the surviving members to tell her who is doing this, and why.
Ayer plays around with timelines, having the cop and the not-exactly-disgraced Breacher enter crime scenes which flash back to the actual events of the murder. Ayer throws a loopy chase through downtown Atlanta into the mix.
And he and co-writer Skip Woods pour an enormous effort into the Budweiser-bullets-and-strip bars milieu that this team wallows in. Enos, of TVs The Killing, acquits herself as a tough broad among tough guys.
Manganiello, all tattoos and corn rows, stands out as well. Worthington has elaborate biker facial hair and an accent (hes Australian) that comes and goes. Avatar II may not rescue his career after all.
Its more a botched Ayer movie than a retro Arnie adventure, but there are elements of both dragging this down. Extreme, graphic violence and a serious anti-law enforcement ethos combine with flippant gunslingers executing bad guys and dropping the occasional bystander, giving more thought to their zingers than the body count.
Sabotage makes you wonder with nothing but flop star vehicles made for smaller and smaller studios since he turned 65 when this worn-out Austrian war horse will be put out to pasture.
Moore is the film reviewer for the Orlando Sentinel. His email address is rbmoore@orlandosentinel.com