Sabotage

It's been a rough 2013/2014 for ole' Arnie. Last year's The Last Stand bombed at the box office, then Escape Plan. It's disconcerting to me because he is Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger. Did I like The Last Stand? No. Did I like Escape Plan? No. I LOVED Escape Plan. But both films should have performed well due to it being his first 2 films since 2003. Maybe I was born in the wrong fucking decade, but I just don't find The Rock, Vin Diesel, and Jason Statham all that appealing. Do I have anything against the likes of them? No. The appeal with them is not unfathomable. I get it. I just don't understand how they can perform better at the box office alone than Stallone & Schwarzenegger TOGETHER! I seriously want to smash a fucking light bulb on an infant's head with the thought of it. And I don't want the "they're too old" excuse. First of all, they're NOT too old. Just look at Stallone. CASE. IN. FUCKING. POINT. Secondly, how the fuck does Liam Neeson START his action-career at damn-near 60, yet Stallone & Schwarzenegger fail to CONTINUE theirs at 67 & 66?! I suppose there are some riddles of the universe I will never come to understand. Like the radio, twerking & mayo.


I guess I'll discuss Sabotage since Im already drunk and hateful. How that makes sense, who fucking knows?...

I really didn't get amped for this film up until the week it came out. Every bar I was at, it would be on the TV. Then some reviews came out. And despite the consensus of the film, the words "VIOLENT", "TOTALLY FUCKING VIOLENT", and "BLOODY AS FUCK" would pop up in almost every one (okay, maybe not in that phrasing, but fuck off. How's that?).

The film is directed from the human who wrote Training Day and directed End of Watch. He did some films in between, but to be quite honest, I never even bothered to watch them because I could be on YouTube watching Dave Mustaine insulting fans instead. The other reason: Training Day was okay, and End of Watch was... A movie. But I actually liked Sabotage.

First of all, it's great to see Arnie in a different type of movie, and as a different character. Does he still own the screen? Of fucking course. But this film is based in reality. His character is based in reality. I mean, of course you'll never see a Schwarzenegger character without an Austrian accent. That's almost always a given in everyone of his films. But he is plays a pretty damn serious character in this. Very few "cheese" one-liners. Don't get me wrong, the dialogue isn't very good. It's a lot of corny "grunt talk". But very little comes from Arnie.

I guess I skipped the introductory part. The film is about a DEA task force that is lead by Schwarzenegger, and they're attempting to take down the Mexican drug cartel. One of their missions in the beginning of the film is to seize millions upon millions of dollars. They formulate a plan to make off with $10 million after destroying the countless millions that will be unaccounted for. Double-crosses are made, their agency catches wind, and.... Thus the film unfolds.

In terms of the story, it's pretty basic. A band of brothers (and sister) are tight-knit, money separates them like water and vinegar, blood begins to shed, a reveal is made, and then, resolve. But it's effective enough to want to know the outcome. Though, the end of the film feels like a completely different film. And I don't mean that in a negative way. In fact, the end is quite possibly the best part of the film. It's "horns-in-the-air" good.

But as I mentioned a couple shitty paragraphs previous, the film is bloody. And from the B-roll footage I saw, most of it is practical FX. Sure, there are probably some CG FX, but everything looks pretty good. But then again, I can't see this having a bigger budget than maybe $30 million. And Im sure most of that went to Schwarzenegger's awesome Hitler-youth haircut.

Is the film great? No, but it's damn fucking cool. And especially given the visual fodder being thrown my way this year, it's surely the best of the year so far.