My reviews are intended for those who have watched the movie already and want to dive a little deeper with me. Consider this the spoiler alert.
I have no experience being chased down by a masked killer, or losing a child, or fighting in a foxhole. We give movies permission to take us to a situation we're wholly unfamiliar with - it's part of the deal. I can't say that the dialogue in SABOTAGE is necessarily unnatural - I'm sure plenty of soldiers actually talk this way - but I found it distracting nonetheless. Heavy cursing can color a movie full of angry people, like in CASINO, or it can make it sound like it was written by 7th grader at a skatepark. It's a gentle dance. In END OF WATCH, the very real chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña sold the occasional silliness of the dialogue. Sure, you weren't always in on the joke between these two cops, but you at least believed the joke existed in whatever reality you're watching.
SABOTAGE stars a team of DEA special agents, headed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who specialize in raiding Mexican drug cartels. On an operation kicking off the movie, they shoot up the home of a cartel member, and it's incredibly bloody. SABOTAGE is less of a "realistic depiction of the war on drugs" and more of an action-movie fantasy wherein occasionally authentic moments happen. Characters don't just burst into rooms full of bad guys freely; they cover corners and watch each others backs. When the raid goes well, bodies drop with realistic decorum - cold, undramatic, and with believable blood splatter. The greatest cumulative success of these firefight scenes is that it doesn't quite feel like an action movie in parts - it feels much creepier. Even when a bad guy holds an innocent woman hostage, and the DEA soldier guns the woman's assailant down, it doesn't necessarily feel "good." When Arnold throws a pipe through a guy in COMMANDO and tells him to "blow off some steam," its cathartic and funny because of its outlandishness. We're not in our reality anymore. In SABOTAGE, there are eerie moments when, even if you've never seen a man get shot to death in reality, it rings true anyway. A man's life just ended in a curt, brutal fashion. The bad guy disappearing from the movie isn't because Arnold doesn't have a second one liner. He's going away because he's been forcefully torn from this world and forgotten about the minute he's not a threat. The real world gets dragged into the action scene for a moment, and while it's thrilling, it's certainly not "fun." Even with simplistic moral complexity of the specific situation, it fails to be "fun" because it feels believable, in at least some skewed version of reality. Ayer's got some big issues on his mind, but he still subjugates them to telling a story with characters he's interested in. His primary goal is not trying to give you "the real deal" on the war on drugs or PTSD in soldiers. It's strikes a nice balance, where the door is opened for reality to come in for a few minutes and help ground the audience. Though the ugliness of reality might turn viewers off, finding it a bit too "grimdark" to find enjoyable, it certainly accomplishes the admirable goal of the movie - anyone could die at any minute. You couldn't say that about THE EXPENDABLES, the other Arnold movie where he shares screen-time with action movie beefcakes.
On a technical level, David Ayer is a pretty inventive guy. In END OF WATCH, he took lessons from found footage movies and real-life dash-cam footage of cops on the job, and effused it into a taut police thriller. If he wants to attach the camera to the barrel of a shotgun, he does just long enough for it to serve the scene. If he thinks a scene will be placid if he continues his found footage execution, he brakes from that and shoots the film conventionally. Ayer places the camera wherever the hell he thinks it will serve the scene. That's admirable. He's got a genuine place in his heart for this story, and thinks he's got something good here. He never expands it to something incongruously large - the fights are always between the crew and a small set of baddies, and it benefits from that. Each kill feels like a challenge has been met for the crew, so its satisfying on that level. The whole movie has a grimy texture, and fits in well with other exploitation movies - its not a big budget, big picture affair, and it aspires to be something enticing on an animal level. It's emotional, its brash, it's loud, its bloody.
On a technical level, David Ayer is a pretty inventive guy. In END OF WATCH, he took lessons from found footage movies and real-life dash-cam footage of cops on the job, and effused it into a taut police thriller. If he wants to attach the camera to the barrel of a shotgun, he does just long enough for it to serve the scene. If he thinks a scene will be placid if he continues his found footage execution, he brakes from that and shoots the film conventionally. Ayer places the camera wherever the hell he thinks it will serve the scene. That's admirable. He's got a genuine place in his heart for this story, and thinks he's got something good here. He never expands it to something incongruously large - the fights are always between the crew and a small set of baddies, and it benefits from that. Each kill feels like a challenge has been met for the crew, so its satisfying on that level. The whole movie has a grimy texture, and fits in well with other exploitation movies - its not a big budget, big picture affair, and it aspires to be something enticing on an animal level. It's emotional, its brash, it's loud, its bloody.
In many ways, SABOTAGE is the movie THE EXPENDABLES could have been. For one, SABOTAGE actually delivers on the title and the promise of that series in that each member of the squad is an independent operator, who affects the story in their own way, and are killed off in creative, satisfying ways, one by one. I'd call the deaths "dignified," but that's not really true in a traditional sense. I consider them "dignified" in that if the movie takes time and energy to give them anything more elaborate than a headshot and a complete disappearance, it considers them important. THE EXPENDABLES is so squeamish about killing its A-list celebrities (or even injuring them) tht the toothless action scenes become inconsequential. The light, CGI-tainted gunfights don't help, but when you know that almost every one of its stable will return next time (or at worst disappear due to contract negotiations) it's rather unexciting. As well, they don't have any real independent affect on the plot - they merely show up, and take turns blowing away bad guys and looking tough. It's lifeless and artless, like jazz created by a robot. Here is Chuck Norris' contractually obligated fistfight. He will look cool for 3 minutes. Then, he will be followed by Jet Li's promised time. Rinse & repeat.
One hero surviving against impossible odds is wonderfully thrilling, even if you know the movie's not going to kill the hero "in this kind of movie." If the threats are limp and toothless, the film is even more deflated. Mel Gibson's strange career-wide trope of being repeatedly tortured, beaten, and maimed in his movies makes for a great SOUTH PARK punchline, but it also makes you identify and feel for him. Watching Riggs get electrocuted and convincingly injured might always end with him snapping bad guys necks, but in the moment you can feel his pain, and get excited about what he'll unleash. If Riggs just started with the neck snaps pre-torture, there's no way it would feel as triumphant and transcendent a moment as when he's finally liberated. It might feel a little gross, even. Now, throw in a bunch of other unkillable heroes on top of your first "expendable," and now it's an unmerciful slaughter. Top that with uninventive filmmaking, and the game is over before it begins. It's like watching a horserace you've already fixed.
EXPENDABLES pursues a different goal than SABOTAGE. In the first movie, there's a little headquarters for the team, where Mickey Rourke gives tattoos, beefcake guys swill working-class cheap beer, and they make fun of each other. The camaraderie is clean and playful. The good guys are supposed to be fun to hang around - you want to go out on a raid with them, even. They're not misogynists, and seem to care about the collateral damage around them - the third movie ends with Arnold and Jet Li snuggled up in a bar. It's too fleeting to tell if it's supposed to be a "fuck yeah!" progressive moment snuck into your punch'em-up, a little air being taken out of the sails of the hyper-masculinity of the series (or more accurately an appropriation of that masculinity), or just another gay panic joke handled with not enough broadness to come across. Let's not forget the era these guys got famous in, and these movies are attempting to recapture. In LETHAL WEAPON, when Murtaugh puts out a fire on Riggs back after a house explodes 20 feet from them, Riggs asks "what are you a fag?" Either way, that (possibly) subversive moment would never happen with SABOTAGE. Those guys pass gay panic and sexual harassment around their little gang like it's a bag of chips.
SABOTAGE has this same HQ, but with a decidedly different tenor - every guy in there seems to hate each other's guts. It's the anxiety of inaction - the sort of thing that makes ambitious, aggressive people go insane. These guys have been cooped up, waiting for something to do, being driven apart by federal investigations for months into their actions during the last raid. A lot of money went missing, and the cops know one of them took it. We don't know, and they all don't know either. Now, they wait around, impotent, getting fat and lazy and angrier day by day. They just want to go hurt something, at least. When they can't turn their aggression on the cartels, they turn on each other. Someone among them betrayed them, but who? Mix that in with a steady stream of PBR (too consistent to not be a product placement, but who would want their brand drank by these assholes?), and they fight like a drunk dysfunctional family. Arnold swings in one day to get his guys in gear, and he's disappointed to see them act this way. He's sort of the shitty stepdad to these people, not really taking control of them unless he really, really has to.
Next, the plot kicks into place: a Ten Little Indians story where one by one the team gets picked off in creative ways. It's like a real life horror movie, where they discover one of their operators has been stapled to a ceiling. Another operator takes the opportunity to antagonize the cop investigating the murder (Olivia Williams, RUSHMORE) by showing her pictures of other times this has happened to enemies of the cartels.
Next, the plot kicks into place: a Ten Little Indians story where one by one the team gets picked off in creative ways. It's like a real life horror movie, where they discover one of their operators has been stapled to a ceiling. Another operator takes the opportunity to antagonize the cop investigating the murder (Olivia Williams, RUSHMORE) by showing her pictures of other times this has happened to enemies of the cartels.
How SABOTAGE treats women feels very post-P.C. Women are included in the plot and allowed to affect it based off their own motivations, but lingering feelings stick around. A woman is the main villain, which would come across as a fun little change-up, if it weren't for the fact that she's also sexually promiscuous who cheats on her husband (also on the team - and then murders him too!), and fucks another team member - who is in on the plan, too. The movie is too close to being grossed out by her sexuality for it to feel alright when it wants us to cheer for her getting gunned down later. As for depictions of women in film, it's not the most progressive, but at least Arnold treats her like any other member of the team when he kills her, and doesn't call her a bitch first. It's a man's rough idea of what feminism is - that women are equal opportunists for bloodletting as much as guys. At least there's inclusion and she's not just a piece of meat. She's introduced as an undercover agent, about to fuck a guy just to continue the ruse, but the moment the call comes for her to go loud, she just unsympathetically starts shooting. That's refreshing.
There's another woman in the movie, whose role further obfuscates how the movie feels about women. The wonderful Olivia Williams (like, 900th billed, below "Stripclub Bouncer" for some reason) has a lot of fun as an investigator, and she joins in the boys club fun and tells the team members to cut the bullshit when necessary. Her character is almost totally fulfilled until the last act, where Arnold fucks her and fucks her over, and then she gets all soft and sensitive about it. I get that she's human, but it feels like a betrayal of how badass she is. Her role as an outside force, telling the team how pathetic their macho bullshit is, and how they need to work with her if they want to get this done, is an interesting counterpoint to how loathsome the team is. Then she gets pulled into all his bullshit, and it weakens the character.
I can't quite tell what Ayer thinks of these characters, to be honest. Though at first the movie plays like an action horror movie almost, with unseen killers coming in and picking off the team one-by-one. Eventually the team discovers that it's not the cartel - its one of their own. This conceit would only work, and it does work, if you believe most of the characters are big enough assholes that there's some mystery about which one is the worst of the pack - a backstabbing murderer, with a glib sense of creativity in the kills. That this even works seems to demonstrate that Ayer, like me, sees them all as a pack of selfish, boorish assholes who need to be retired, separated, and maybe even jailed. While that's happening though, Ayers' staunch respect for military and police officers is evident in his other movies, but less so in this one. He wants to capture the way they talk, their work ethic, their willingness to sacrifice for a greater good. Smartly, Ayers avoids the eye-rolling implication that everything soldiers do is in perfect service of the nation and the world. Some soldiers are in the life because the military gives them a sense of belonging and it keeps them actively moving forward. It's so much more complicated than an army of Pure American Heroes going out to Serve Justice, and it's appreciated that the team isn't a set of inhuman, unfeeling robots. That's the point, really - soldiers should be treated like human beings and not icons. But by making them so loathsome in the same breath, it creates a strange dichotomy.
The trauma these soldiers go through is handled in a casual way, but not necessarily disrespectfully. They drink too much, they treat women like shit, and when someone tries to pump the brakes, they punch out them right the fuck out. This is the sort of behavior that turns off viewers looking for a black & white action fantasy, or they have trouble separating depiction versus endorsement. Just because these guys are in front of us, and the other guys are worse, doesn't make them heroes. It doesn't even mean we're supposed to like them.
The trauma these soldiers go through is handled in a casual way, but not necessarily disrespectfully. They drink too much, they treat women like shit, and when someone tries to pump the brakes, they punch out them right the fuck out. This is the sort of behavior that turns off viewers looking for a black & white action fantasy, or they have trouble separating depiction versus endorsement. Just because these guys are in front of us, and the other guys are worse, doesn't make them heroes. It doesn't even mean we're supposed to like them.
The movie is confused, but the mix is not necessarily a bad thing. We're in a post-John Wayne cinematic world, and there's little room left to portray war as a big, grand adventure where the goodhearted take on the cowardly evil. Joe Manganiello's character, mostly played as a big dumb violent brute, eventually reveals his inner anxieties about his place in a world where he's not a soldier. He never has to face that future, as he's almost immediately killed by the inside killer. Any attempt to understand war as a set of real life human beings, who must pay real life mental & physical tolls for their service, is moving in the right direction. We should be done as a culture casting real life wars as just another setting for our heroes to go on adventures, taking on threats regardless of collateral damage.
SABOTAGE coopts the action movie hero's noble quest and turns it into a gross little reminder at how those scenes would end in the real world. Our opening shot of a woman, Arnold's wife, being tortured to death in a snuff tape/ransom demand is a direct reminder of how horrible villains truly are. It pushes the plot forward, until the grand reveal of Arnold in a dank, bloodied, dark little shithole hotel room in Mexico, 90% of his revenge achieved and (Mexico is portrayed exclusively as a shitty-horrible place where monsters live and prey upon the innocents around them) is sitting there, deciding when to kill himself. We don't see how he got there. He's just sitting there, unsatisfied and lost. Arnold's revenge grants him no relief, no justice. The last man is just outside of his reach, but even achieving that, he seems to know already, will bring him no satisfaction. Just one last thing to do before dying in this deep dark hole. In the epilogue to the movie, Arnold disappears to Mexico, money-in-toe and a vengeance planned.
SABOTAGE takes Arnold's career, and puts into an honest late-career retrospective. THE LAST STAND attempted a similar goal and failed. One of my favorite directors in the world, Kim Jee-woon (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD), entered the Hollywood system like so many other import directors, and turned out an unfortunately generic little bit of action fluff. The film took Arnold's career in retrospective, and did what THE EXPENDABLES did in action movies, and LAST VEGAS did for geriatric comedies - it took surface level observations about getting older, ended up with condescending trash with an eye for cashing in cheap nostalgia. Rather than honestly diving into the uncontrollable force of violence Arnold used to bring about on baddies in the 80s and 90s, they make cheap jokes about how these guys are "getting too old for this," or directly referencing old catch-phrases. That's not creating something new - that's about cashing on previous successes. Originality isn't being valued, it's being commoditized.
We can't perfectly recapture 80s glory of movies like DEATH WISH 3 or THE WARRIORS. We can take lessons from guys like Walter Hill, but any self-respecting director should want to run with concepts, not replicate. DREDD ran with John Carpenter's clean western style, and a thrumming synth score, but it also involved some camerawork that would be impossible without digital cameras and modern specail effects. The proper homage is to take what you like and move along. Quentin Tarantino understands this - his films pull from a disparate, wide range sources, but they still feel distinctly modern because of that pastiche film-globalism. It blends together into something cohesive, and original. Everybody steals (intentionally or not), Tarantino's just more open about it.
We can't perfectly recapture 80s glory of movies like DEATH WISH 3 or THE WARRIORS. We can take lessons from guys like Walter Hill, but any self-respecting director should want to run with concepts, not replicate. DREDD ran with John Carpenter's clean western style, and a thrumming synth score, but it also involved some camerawork that would be impossible without digital cameras and modern specail effects. The proper homage is to take what you like and move along. Quentin Tarantino understands this - his films pull from a disparate, wide range sources, but they still feel distinctly modern because of that pastiche film-globalism. It blends together into something cohesive, and original. Everybody steals (intentionally or not), Tarantino's just more open about it.
The final scene is a culmination of the forgotten revenge plot, a brutal close-range cowboy battle not unlike the end of THE WILD BUNCH. It's not about doing the noble thing anymore. It's not about getting Arnold's family back - the man responsible for their death assures him will never happen in a bad last minute attempt at either mercy or cruelty. Arnold takes comfort that he would never kill this guy's family - he has principles. But he doesn't seem to believe he's a good person, or take any solace in it. Arnold comes out of the bathroom, Colt .45 in hand, gunning down whoever gets in his way - men or women. When the deed is done, he sits down at a table, pours himself perhaps his 500th whiskey for the movie, puffs his trademark stogey, and waits to die, a bloody wound pouring from his chest. This is his UNFORGIVEN moment. He's not proud of his actions, but an old killer like him wouldn't have it any other way. He can't learn to let go, he can just learn to function like he is - for awhile, anyway. We leave him like this. There will be no escape. There will be no future. This is the darkest of all possible endings for Arnold's career - a stubborn refusal to adapt or evolve. His legend is already made for him, he just has to crawl in there. But would we want, or would we accept, any other Arnold?
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