David Ayer has
another film coming out this year that isn’t a cop drama/action film, which
previously appeared to be his only genre. As if attempting to make up for the
fact that one of his films doesn’t have his usual, Ayer started out the first
quarter release of 2014 with Sabotage,
an onslaught of awful crooked cop film clichés and a poorly written vehicle for
Arnold Schwarzenegger to show us his acting chops. It seems to aspire to be for
Schwarzenegger what Copland was for
Sylvester Stallone, but falls short in just about every way possible. Even
though Schwarzenegger holds his own as a dramatic actor, a few of the
supporting roles are comically cartoonish.
The storyline
for Sabotage is actually remarkably
simple, though the presentation is so convoluted that it gives the perception
of intelligence for the first half of the film. Many of the film’s attributes
are similar to Ridley Scott’s abhorrent The
Counselor; with a great deal more shouting and fewer metaphors in-between the
scenes of shocking violence. The film opens with a DEA task force storming a
Mexican drug cartel safe house, led by veteran cop Breacher Wharton
(Schwarzenegger). The team uses the raid as a cover to steal $10 million from
the cartel, but this leads to each of them being killed off, one-by-one.
I could go into
more details about the intricacy of the relationships in the task force, which
include a dysfunctional married couple and a number of roughneck thugs in
varying shapes and sizes. There are a lot of talented actors filling these
roles, but most of the time they are overshadowed by the overacting of a few
bad apples in the bunch. Unfortunately, I barely remember Terrence Howard, Josh
Halloway or Max Martini because they share nearly every scene with Mireille
Enos, who gives a theater performance for a film. She doesn’t just chew the
scenery, she devours her every scene partner with a poisonous energy that makes
me shudder just to think about. Not since Jar Jar Binks have a longed so bad
for an obnoxious character to be removed from an otherwise still ‘just average’
film. I longed for more sequences of grisly violence, just for a break from the
aimless screenplay of scenes filled with characters just yelling back and forth
amongst each other about something none of them know.
The Blu-ray
combo pack release of Sabotage comes with a DVD and an HD digital copy of the
film. Exclusive to the Blu-ray are alternative endings, with additional deleted
scenes included on both DVD and Blu-ray. There is also a generic making-of
featurette. These limited special features seem to indicate the studio’s lack
of faith in this film, despite all of the elements which could have resulted in
a far better film.
Entertainment Value:
6.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 4/10
Historical
Significance: 1/10
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