There are plenty of reasons to dislike Sabotage, the latest flick starring the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's relentlessly gory, and occasionally storms head-first into dumb, torture-porn territory. Anyone watching it for its purported connection to Agatha Christie's most-beloved mystery novel, And Then There Were None, will be disappointed - the considerably less brainy film is, at best, only vaguely inspired by the ingenious twists of the book. But Sabotage remains compelling almost all the way through, and is all the more notable for featuring one of Schwarzenegger's finest, darkest performances yet.
John 'Breacher' Wharton (Schwarzenegger) leads a rogue DEA team on a drug bust, during which they try to skim ten million dollars for themselves. But their scheme goes awry, and the money mysteriously disappears. When investigations into the crime finally end, Wharton brings his team members together again - only for someone to start murdering them, one by one, in grisly, brutal fashion. Detective Caroline Brentwood (Olivia Williams) comes on board to piece together the entire puzzle. But, as she draws closer to the enigmatic Breacher, she discovers that there's far more to the man than meets the eye.
David Ayers' film has come under fire for myriad reasons: it's been called an ugly, twisted piece of film-making, more interested in sickening gore than character depth. Ostensibly, that's true. The murders are almost unbearably disgusting, Ayers' camera lingering almost lovingly over scenes awash in blood and internal organs. The film also deteriorates as it goes on, degenerating from a dark, uber-twisted thriller into a frustrating sequel to Final Destination, wherein death insists on finding its victims in the most revolting of ways.
But the real surprise of Sabotage is how it actually manages to juggle its main characters surprisingly well for much of its running time. A few characters do indeed turn out to be narrative fodder, quickly sliced up for maximum shock value. But others have far greater impact on audiences. In Breacher's team, the drugged-out Lizzy (Mireille Enos) and her dreadlocked husband Monster (an almost unrecognisable, bulked-up Sam Worthington) stand out. Caroline, too, is an assuringly capable, level-headed presence - despite some of the ignominies the character suffers in her growing relationship with Breacher.
The cast also does quite effective work, with Schwarzenegger leading the charge. As Breacher, he mines reserves of darkness and complexity he's barely accessed before, somehow managing to capture the man's odd mix of madness, nobility and ruthlessness. He's well-matched by Williams, who lends both the film and her character an air of respectability best- observed in scenes that might otherwise have played as a series of cheap grindhouse shots. Few people could pull off smoking desperately while bathed in blood, but Williams does it with charm to spare. Enos, too, is a joyful, ball-busting standout in a film running almost entirely on testosterone fumes, and Worthington heads down dark, bitter paths in a more convincing way than he's managed thus far in the likes of Avatar and Clash Of The Titans.
All in all, Sabotage is better than you might expect, but not as good as it probably could have been. While the film does revolve around many deeply considered ideas of vengeance, loyalty and morality, it doesn't really manage to come to grips with all of them beneath a backwash of diced-up body parts and pints of blood. It is, however, consistently gripping and almost worryingly compelling, a thriller that packs a punch so brutal it fascinates even as it disgusts.
