Schwarzenegger returns to big screen in ‘Sabotage’ flop

As far as politicians re-entering the entertainment industry after serving time in office (looking at you Fred Thompson), Arnold Schwarzenegger is probably the best at it.

Schwarzenegger plays John ”Breacher” Wharton, a commander of an undercover DEA Spec Ops team with a rogue cast of characters. The main problem is that not one of them is inherently likeable.

$10 million is stolen from a drug bust and one by one, the team gets killed off. Normally in a film, this puts you on pins and needles fearing for the characters’ safety, but director David Ayer failed miserably. You almost feel sorry for Breacher since his wife and son were brutally murdered by Mexican drug traffickers, but even his vengeance does not excuse his scummy persona. One bright spot, however, is Ayer has a great eye for writing and shooting believable dialogue. I felt like I was watching real banter by bros and not some trite witticisms that plague many studio backed films.

David Ayer strikes me as someone who, like Shane Black, works so much better as a screenwriter. I mean, Denzel Washington won an Oscar spouting his words. His films have a gross veneer and ultraviolence to them that while I am sure is more realistic like his previous film “End of Watch,” becomes borderline excessive and unwatchable in “Sabotage.”

If, however, you are interested in seeing an absolutely off the rails movie that completely says screw any sense of realism, then this might be of interest to you. As trashy as this movie might be, I could honestly see myself alone on a Saturday afternoon guzzling Natural Light and watching this on TNT.

Most criminal of all is not the misuse of stars like Terrence Howard, Sam Worthington or a hypnotically trashy Mireille Enos; it is the damn title, which tells you absolutely nothing about the film. I think a better title might have been “Unlikable Badass.”