Film review: Sabotage

Undated Film Still Handout from Sabotage. Pictured fifth from left: Arnold Schwarzenegger as John 'Breacher' Wharton. See PA Feature FILM Film Reviews. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Robert Zuckerman/Lionsgate. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Film Reviewsr.

In Sabotage, the Illinois-born writer-director melds the testosterone-fuelled camaraderie and grittiness of his earlier films, cutting between explosive gun fights and unsettling scenes of videotaped torture.

Like the muscle-bound characters, Ayer’s picture foregoes subtlety and diplomacy, preferring a full-on assault of wanton violence.

When a member of internal affairs warns one dirty cop: “If that cartel finds out you stole 10 million dollars, they’re gonna slit your throat from ear to ear,” he isn’t joking.

Dismemberment, disembowelment and evisceration abound and Ayer delights in the aftermath of ritualistic slaughter.

Implausibilities stack up faster than expletives in a script co-written by Skip Woods, including a hilarious moment of forced sexual tension between Arnold Schwarzenegger and a female co-star.

Schwarzenegger, in fcat, looks his age in close-up but still takes the lead in big set-pieces while Williams struggles to impose herself in a woefully underwritten role.

And action sequences that bookend the film are polar opposites in terms of plausibility.