FILM REVIEW Sabotage

LOOK WHO’S BACK?Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the lead role in ‘Sabotage’.

No more heroes anymore

Cinema

Daniel Carey

IF ever the cinema-going public was ready for a decent film about the war on drugs, it’s now. Those of us pining the death of TV series ‘Breaking Bad’ are having to make do with the principals’ follow-up projects – Bryan Cranston in ‘Godzilla’ and Aaron Paul in the terrible car flick ‘Need For Speed’. So I really wanted to like David Ayer’s ‘Sabotage’, but that proved impossible.

When we first meet drug war hero ‘Breacher’ (Arnold Schwarzenegger), he’s in distress, watching footage of a woman who’s been taken hostage. Fast forward eight months, and he’s leading a raid by a Drug Enforcement Administration task force. They’re a ‘shoot first, ask questions never’ bunch.

If senior counsel SeΡn Guerin fancied doing a fictional follow-up to his investigation of Garda misconduct, he could start with this collection of corrupt law-enforcement officials. Ten million dollars they had planned to cream off for themselves in the drugs bust goes missing. Their superiors are suspicious, but unable to prove any wrongdoing. Then members of the team start dying in interesting ways.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for this collection of misfits? If so, I didn’t get the memo. This is the worst kind of macho nonsense, in which a supposed crack outfit behave like frat boys – training badly, drinking lots and laughing hysterically at memorials for their dead friends. Whoever is knocking them off one by one has got my vote.

There are times when ‘Sabotage’ seemingly yearns to be ‘The Italian Job’, but it has more of an ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ vibe. The only character with wit, charm, integrity or, indeed, a brain is policewoman Caroline Brentwood (Olivia Williams), who’s sent to investigate the group. But as things develop, even some of her behaviour becomes inexplicable. Perhaps stupidity is infectious.

Though the focus is on the action, there is a handful of decent if coarse lines. “Who do you know in Washington, John?” a man asks Arnie when he hears an investigation into the missing money has been halted, adding: “Got a picture of a senator f***ing a goat, maybe?”  Caroline says she smokes ‘only when I find my witnesses nailed to the ceiling’, which sounds reasonable even to members of the anti-tobacco lobby.

It’s quite depressing to think that the most innovative part of this picture is the varied manner of the deaths we witness – though after a while, the violence becomes a bit too much. There’s a couple of decent visuals: Arnie in a cowboy hat, for instance. And the Austrian oak gives one of his best performances in recent years (which, admittedly, is not saying much). But simply giving him a large gun to carry does not, it transpires, a good film make. The supporting cast includes Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard and Mireille Enos, and characters called ‘Monster’, ‘Neck’, ‘Grinder’, ‘Piro’ and ‘Smoke’.

There are plot holes all over the place. Despite the fact that they are presumably suspects, members of the gang constantly show up expectedly behind Caroline’s desk – which is, after all, in a police station. Towards the end, the chief suspect ends up being pursued by just two people (including one DEA agent), despite the fact that every uniformed officer in the state of Georgia is supposedly on the hunt. And the supposed big ‘reveal’ left me cold.

With a bit of work, ‘Sabotage’ could have been a perfectly serviceable episode of ‘CSI’. But those of us looking for our ‘Breaking Bad’ fix will have to make do with re-runs – or buy the box-set.

Rating 4 out of 10