Sabotage

Sabotage (2014)

21% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 68 reviews)

Runtime: 109 minutes

Directed by: David Ayer

Starring: Arnold, Sam Worthington, Joe Manganiello, Terrence Howard, Mireille Enos

From: Open Road Films

I apologize for getting this review up so damn late. Things happened, such as catching up on online activities, fantasy baseball drafts, taking a road trip to see the movie, and yeah, talking about this movie elsewhere... or rather, ranting and raving about it.

I went to the Cinemark in Lakeland; it's a new joint that opened up 2 ½ months ago and I went there to see the newest Paranormal Activity movie. It's a real nice place and all their screens are real large, so why not go there to see in high quality an action thriller like this was? It did look and sound nice, at least.

To steal the plot description from the IMDb: “Members of an elite DEA task force find themselves being taken down one by one after they rob a drug cartel safe house.” True. They stole 10 million dollars and they were going to pick it up later from the sewers (the way of getting the money out of there involved the sewer systems! Don't ask) but it was missing, so they begin to suspect that one of them ripped off everyone else. If only they acted “elite” more often instead of coming across as buffoons most of the time...

I've watched and enjoyed movies filled with scummy characters and a lot of vulgarity. For example, Killer Joe and The Wolf of Wall Street. To borrow an idea from Harlo of the BMFCast podcast, you have to give me a reason to care in a situation like that, which those two movies did by having a very interesting story and characters you were invested in seeing what happened to them, even if the outcome was obvious. Here, this movie did not do that at all. All the members of the “elite group” were complete asstagonists who were vulgar as hell, constantly dropping F-bombs and saying disgusting things to each other... and other people, which was even worse. They were all awful repugnant human beings... even Arnold.

The local cops who you see investigate things (including Olivia Williams) are not as bad, but they also say vulgar things and at one point she swims nude, just because. The entire movie is just crass like that. Things are just ugly and unpleasant the entire time. I was amused that the crew drank bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but otherwise there wasn't too much to be amused by. Unless it was played at the end of the end credits, you don't hear the Beastie Boys song of the same name. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Besides the unpleasant story full of disgusting characters and vulgarities straight out of a Rob Zombie film, you also have graphic gore. In a different sort of movie I wouldn't have really minded it. In a dark dour nasty movie like this, it just made the tone even worse and I don't even know why it was needed. It did not make for an enjoyable film experience, at least for me. I know that others enjoyed the movie despite its ugliness, but that was a deal-breaker for me, all those terrible characters who I wanted to see die.

Now, I did not despise this movie. I was still interested in the story to see how it turned out; well, it was nonsensical-which didn't help matters-but there's that and the music was fine. I gave it 1 ½ out of 5 on Letterboxd. It's just that I was as disappointed in it as I was with Escape Plan, a film many like for whatever reasons. At least there's The Last Stand.

I will return Tuesday night.