01-14-2015, 06:15 PM
Sabotage (2014, available on Netflix Instant)
Take it away, San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick Lasalle:
[INDENT=2]Those determined to miss the point might call "Sabotage" far-fetched, but there has never been anything "close-fetched" or "regular-fetched" about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in his late 60s, remains a pretty extreme character onscreen. Schwarzenegger is the defining reality here, so if the story of "Sabotage" makes little sense, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that the writer-director, David Ayer, understood his job and did it.
In place of coherence, "Sabotage" mainly offers spectacle, not the spectacle of action or blood, though there's plenty of both, but the spectacle of characters in collision. It's Schwarzenegger and [Olivia] Williams in a dance, sometimes working together, sometimes clashing, pursuing their own interests, coming together and coming apart. The story and all the other elements are a frame for that interaction and for Schwarzenegger himself, who has somehow, over the years, become interesting.
Everything else you can throw out. "Sabotage" cannot be called a good movie, not with a straight face. But as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, it has something.
[/INDENT]
I totally agree, and give it a B-. For a Netflix stream I'd already purchased, I got my evening's worth of entertainment.
Take it away, San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick Lasalle:
[INDENT=2]Those determined to miss the point might call "Sabotage" far-fetched, but there has never been anything "close-fetched" or "regular-fetched" about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in his late 60s, remains a pretty extreme character onscreen. Schwarzenegger is the defining reality here, so if the story of "Sabotage" makes little sense, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that the writer-director, David Ayer, understood his job and did it.
In place of coherence, "Sabotage" mainly offers spectacle, not the spectacle of action or blood, though there's plenty of both, but the spectacle of characters in collision. It's Schwarzenegger and [Olivia] Williams in a dance, sometimes working together, sometimes clashing, pursuing their own interests, coming together and coming apart. The story and all the other elements are a frame for that interaction and for Schwarzenegger himself, who has somehow, over the years, become interesting.
Everything else you can throw out. "Sabotage" cannot be called a good movie, not with a straight face. But as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, it has something.
[/INDENT]
I totally agree, and give it a B-. For a Netflix stream I'd already purchased, I got my evening's worth of entertainment.