Sabotage (2014)

When you grow up watching action movies starring actors like Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone en Arnold Schwarzenegger, then action-DNA automatically pumps through your blood. Because of that I have kept watching movies by some of these actors despite them slowly going towards their seventies. Of course this means you can not expect the same movies as when they were younger, but with Sabotage Schwarzenegger still delivers a violent action thriller. Does that mean nostalgic feelings or disappointing melancholy?

John ‘Breacher’ Wharton (Schwarzenegger) leads a special DEA unit which is specialized in tactical operations. The movie opens with the raid of the house of a wealthy drug dealer by the team. The group members are close and have come up with the plan to become rich quickly: They will hide part of the money they find, blow up the rest and pick up the money later. When they return though the hidden money has disappeared. After team members are being found dead the question is raised who is responsible. Detective Caroline (Olivia Williams) works on the case and tries to get to the bottom of it. With a team that is closely guarded and not willing to cooperate with the investigation she has a difficult task ahead of her.

The opening of the movie offers what you’d expect from a Schwarzenegger movie, but it doesn’t take long before it turns into a gory “whodunnit” in which there isn’t a lot of action. The movie feels messy and there is a relationship between two characters which isn’t believable at all. It has a couple of well-known actors like Sam Worthington, Josh Holloway and Terrence Howard who, besides looking angry the whole time, don’t get too much to do.

Before the movie reached its conclusion I had already lost interest and felt very disappointed. Here’s hoping that Schwarzenegger’s next appearance, together with a lot of his action movie colleagues in the third Expendables is better.