Bullet Points: Sabotage

I was just as excited as everyone else was when Arnold finished being the Govenator and returned to Hollywood to continue his career. It has been a rough decade or so without the real action stars that we had back in the day. Most of these guys today couldn’t hold a candle to Arnie, Sly, Chuck, Bronson, and my man Dudikoff. They just oozed cool and when it came down to it they could really handle their business. I have to admit that I am not a fan of Arnold’s comeback attempt in The Last Stand. I don’t want to get into it now (future BP) but there were a lot of problems with it. BUT, with Sabotage, I feel like Arnold is back on the right track as this movie kicks a whole bunch of ass!

The Gist: Members of an elite special operations team for the DEA find themselves being hunted down after they rob $10 million from a drug cartel safe house. Now they have to fight for their lives while trying to find out exactly who is killing their partners.

The Cast: I have absolutely no complaints about the team members. They seemed to really do a good job with each of their roles. I wouldn’t call any of them heavyweights but there are some genuine mid-level stars here in Terrance Howard, Josh Holloway, Joe Manganiello, Sam Avatar, and the awesomely named Max Martini. Arnold of course rules so there isn’t much to say about him. I’ve read so many reviews on this movie saying it is Arnold’s worst movie and even though I think that is a ludicrous statement I can see why some people weren’t thrilled with the film. It’s not for everyone. The rapport that the team has with each other may sound insane to most people but it was terrifyingly more realistic than most movies dare to be. Only in a close-knit group like this would you have guys bashing each other and not constantly be fighting it out.

This looks like the cover of a Rap album.

The Villain: This is a hard one. We’re dealing with a group of elite soldiers who kill people for a living. On one hand they are working for the federal government to rid the country of serious drug runners but they also steal a shitload of money from said drug runners so they’re not all good. When they’re not shooting people they’re usually doing drugs, drinking, and hanging out at strip clubs. Now that may sound like a great time to some of you, (and it is) but along the way they start losing sight of what’s going on and people start ending up in pools of their own blood with their guts as pillows. To say that Arnie’s character is a hero is completely wrong but I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a villain either. Needless to say, there isn’t much black and white here, just a whole lot of gray.

I really want to carry around beer in a tactical vest from now on. 

The Action: The action in Sabotage is top-notch. I thoroughly enjoyed the attention to detail that went into making many of the scenes where the team assaults buildings and clears rooms. At one point I even saw Terrance Howard switch his rifle from a right handed hold to a left handed hold because he was entering a room from a different angle. Superb! That’s the kind of stuff that I notice when I watch movies where actors are supposed to be playing elite operators. The shoot-outs and the overall brutality of the killings were surprising to me cause I didn’t know that I was dealing with some shit like that. The finale was supremely badass and although a lot of killing went into getting him there, the look on his face said it all.

I started out really not liking Caroline’s character but she won me over about a third of the way through.

Take it Home:

• Alternate Endings: There were a couple of other endings filmed that made Arnold out to be the bad guy but they were rejected by the producers so we got him in more of an anti-hero role.
• Memories: It was pretty cool to see the pictures of real life Arnold in his home.
• Favorite quote: “Spend enough time on the job, the job bites back.”
• Road king: Are we to believe that Pyro lived in an RV?
• What’s in a name: I don’t love the Sabotage name. I would have preferred the name from the novel it was loosely based on “And Then There Were None.”

Rating: 4/5