Sabotage

**A hopeless mess from start to finish, unfortunately.** This is not a good film, not even to watch with your buddies while drinking beer (which I did). It has some promise in its premise, and at one point we actually wanted to know how the actual betrayal was done, but that feeling soon vanished. I personally think that Arnold does a decent job with what he has to work with, the rest of the actors are pretty atrocious though. Sam Worthington is the best of the rest but that isn't saying much. Pair this with some of the most clichéd, over-the-top, obnoxious personalities ever put on film and sprinkle some next level cringeworthy dialogue on top and you have a recipe for characters you will actively despise. We actually cheered when they got killed off. The biggest flaw of the movie is the editing though. As I mentioned we really wanted to be invested in this movie but either the director or the editor was really hung-over - or possibly still drunk - when they cut this movie. Multiple scenes and situations made less than no sense, and the final nail in the coffin was the realization that the inciting moment, the very reason the entire movie exists, was so badly edited that none of us understood what actually had happened until it was explained by a character much later. The final ten minutes of the movie made it painfully clear that it wouldn't have mattered if we had understood it, or anything really, as the "twist" (I wish I could use even bigger quotation marks) is both underwhelming and as twisted as metal ruler. You get no explanation of how the betrayal is done, no explanation why the events that are portrayed in the movie ever take place, nor why the characters act the way they did. Honestly though, it's our own fault to expect any sort of arc or depth to characters that probably has fewer than two lines of description in the script. It made for some relatively entertaining moments though when all of a sudden characters acted even more erratic and confusing than usual. It became a game of sorts to try and figure out if this was because one or more scenes were cut or if the writer/director actually was that incompetent. The one redeeming quality of this movie is that they took their blood and splatter of said blood seriously. There are a couple of almost intense moments solely due to some realistic gore. There isn't enough to entice any fans of gore and splatter to watch this though. Give this one a pass unless you're really acing for some sub-par action with a mediocre performance from Arnold.

<em>'Sabotage'</em> is almost watchable, but it just falls short of being that in my eyes. It does have issues. I didn't really enjoy Arnold Schwarzenegger in this, but his performance does improve slightly as the film goes on. Mireille Enos isn't the best, nor are any of her co-stars behind Arnie to be honest - Sam Worthington and Olivia Williams are alright, more miss than hit though. This 2014 flick also feels like an all too obvious attempt to replicate <em>'<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/the-expendables/" rel="nofollow">The Expendables</a>'</em> from four years prior (or same year, going by TE3), at least until the ending - where I feel like it does something else. Speaking of the conclusion though, it all felt a bit rushed and not well developed. Another negative is that all the characters are unlikeable, even across the first chunk when the film seems to want them to be. Those are numerous criticisms, evidently, and would usually equal a lower rating from myself. However, as noted at the top, it is almost something I could just sit back and watch, without thinking too much about it. I'm all for so-called 'switch off your brain' flicks, but this doesn't quite reach that level in my opinion.