Atlanta Homicide detective Caroline Brentwood (Olivia Williams) and her partner, Darius Jackson (Harold Perrineau), are the primaries on the murder of a former DEA agent. Their investigation leads them to an elite special operations team led by “Breacher” Wharton (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Wharton and his crew were previously suspended for six months while the FBI investigates their last raid and why there was a $10 million dollar discrepancy between the amount of money the team reporter and the amount of money the FBI was expecting to be recovered. Someone is murdering the members of Breacher’s team one-by-one. Breacher and Brentwood investigate the murder and what happened to the money but they both discover that they can’t trust anyone.
Sabotage has got a cast that is full of talent and familiar faces, including Sam Worthington, Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Martin Donavon, and Josh Holloway. It also has one truly great action scene, a violent chase down a busy Atlanta street that comes to sudden and very bloody conclusion. The film’s final scene takes Sabotage into western territory, with Schwarzenegger dominating the screen like a larger-than-life Sergio Leone hero. It’s just too bad that the rest of the movie isn’t as a good as its final shot or that one chase scene. Unfortunately, most of the film feels repetitive and half-baked, with way too much time being wasted on supporting characters who tend to blend together.
Arnold Schwarzenegger gives one of his better performances. When he made Sabotage, he was no longer a governor and he was also no longer an automatic box office draw and there’s a tired weariness to his performance. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is either miscast (Olivia Williams) or stuck playing one-dimensional characters (everyone else). There’s enough good action sequences to keep Sabotage watchable and Schwarzenegger shows that he can actually be a very good actor but it’s also easy to see why this film didn’t reignite his his career.
Through the Shattered Lens 