Sabotage (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Follow Genre: Action, Thriller
Director: David Ayer
Distributor: Splendid Film

Sabotage (Blu-ray) – Movie Review

Site Score
6.7
Good: Arnold, Deeper story than what you'd expect
Bad: Too 'dirty' first half of the movie
User Score
6.0
(1 votes)
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Rating: 6.0/10 (1 vote cast)

After stating so many times he would be back, Arnold is finally back. Sabotage, is out now on DVD and Blu-ray and it found its way to us. It’s already clear from the start this movie will not be your typical Arnold-experience though. Perhaps even our favorite action heroes tend to have a darker side to them.

Sabotage1

Describing the story for this movie, without spoiling subtle details is actually quite hard. The overall skeleton of the movie follows a fairly typical formula but what they end up doing with it is actually more complex than you’d think. Vagueness is required in order to keep the movie as enjoyable as possible.

John Wharton (Arnold Schwarzenegger) leads a DEA team of very unlikeable undercover agents, who seem to be slightly corrupted. Their first ‘raid’ seems to be a killing spree, rather than an actual bust. Their goal becomes clear after a matter of minutes, seeing they are simply out for the money of the cartel they are raiding. While doing so, the team becomes even more unlikeable when one of their own brother in arms gets shot and they let him waste away in order to keep grabbing more and more of the money.

Of course, stealing a few million dollars is hard to do, when the DEA team is being supervised. In order to do so, they have to keep stalling the back-up and thus this must have raised the necessary suspicion. Soon after the raid, the entire team falls under investigation, John gets a simple desk job and they keep trying to stress him out, hoping he will admit the theft.

After roughly six months, the government casts its eye on other, more pressing issues and decides to throw the team back in action but it seems their reason for celebrating will soon fade away as another member of the team dies, under very suspicious conditions. It seems, someone wants their money back.

In comes Caroline (Olivia Williams), a detective that is dragged in by coincidence. She starts to investigate the first murder and soon after more and more misfortune befalls the team. She stumbles upon a decent amount of skeletons in the closet and still tries to do the best she can for the team.

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The flow of the movie is not what you’d expect. The first half of the movie is quite slow, thanks to the overall gritty and heavy atmosphere. Luckily around the halfway mark the movie picks up and turns in to a more action packed and suspense filled movie, that will surely please fans of a more serious Schwarzenegger performance.

As mentioned earlier, this is not your typical Schwarzenegger movie and that’s thanks to several different reasons. First of all, the typical action theme is replaced by a heavier plot, with a lot of ‘dark’ history behind it. The typical action scenes with the occasional blood splatters are replaced with more dirty, gore-ish executions or guts and human chunks spread all over the place. This might cause the typical Arnold fan to be slightly disappointed, as you will not receive the typical no-brainer-movie.

Acting performances in the movie are either outstanding or the exact opposite. This has to do with the fact that the team is so unlikeable, you’ll be bothered by their stage presence, which might be their aim from the start. Sadly, sometimes you might dislike the team members that much that it actually hampers the overall quality of the movie. That personal opinion aside, most of the actors provide a convincing performance but it’s clear the director was aiming for an overacted ‘badass’ atmosphere throughout the movie. Sadly this takes away a bit of the overall realism but it adds up to the overall dirtiness the movie portrays. Kudos to the fact that you will see an evolution in how certain characters behave, open up or show certain emotions you would not expect them to.

Arnold is what keeps this dirty whole together. Even at his current age he shows us that he is capable of more than the typical action movie and that he’s able to show us a slightly more darker side. This role where he plays the fallen from grace big shot, suits him quite well and it would be great to see him explore roles like this even further.

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Conclusion

Sabotage ends up giving us some mixed feelings. On one side you’ll be presented with something that is completely outside of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s normal playing field, whilst on the other side you will get a decent plot and a decent amount of twists and turns along the way. Those who were expecting a typical action movie might feel a bit cheated, those who wish to see one of their favorite action heroes explore a more darker path should certainly give the movie a chance. As mentioned before, the first half might sometimes be a bit disappointing, the finale surely will pay off.

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Rating: 6.0/10 (1 vote cast)
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Sabotage (Blu-ray) - Movie Review, 6.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

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