Sunday, December 28, 2014         


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Violent actioner sabotages itself

By McClatchy News Services


Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't strut through action films these days. And no amount of editing can hide that, no, grandpa can't kick doors down any more. Or fake it.

Even his line-readings have a fatigue that suggests he's kind of over it.

"Aye trust you mitt my life! Ve are still a family!"

A once-bulky big boy of Hollywood's 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 shootouts, 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 in seeing director David Ayer sucked into the drain that Arnold's been spiraling down ever since his "comeback."

Rated: R
Opens Friday

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," "Pyro" and "Smoke," they're shooting their way into an Atlanta mansion run by a drug lord. And they're robbing him.

They stash the cash, but it disappears. Their bosses know there's missing money. A long investigation (lots of grainy interrogation video) later, nobody's charged. They get off with a scolding: "The only thing anybody in law enforcement has is their credibility."

That'll 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.


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 TV's "The Killing," acquits herself as a tough broad among tough guys.

Manganiello, all tattoos and cornrows, stands out as well. Worthington has elaborate biker facial hair and an accent (he's Australian) that comes and goes. "Avatar II" may not rescue his career after all.



Review by Roger Moore, McClatchy Newspapers

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