Don’t tell Writer/Producer/Director David Ayer, or Arnold Schwarzenegger that 67-year-olds are probably not going to be leading an elite team of undercover DEA special agents in the field. John Breacher, Schwarzenegger’s troubled character, might have a solid government pension at his disposal, but he has no plans to retire until he has tracked down the Mexican drug lord responsible for the torture and murder of his wife and son.
Ayer excels at showing how undercover work in narcotics can affect the mental stability of those who do that most dangerous of jobs; and Arnie still has enough charisma and muscle (literally) to inspire a team of fierce young government killers. But Sabotage, which seems to delight in having an excuse to show graphic, repulsive violence, becomes so crazed and even silly, that it loses its credibility.
Breacher and his team have successfully raided a drug cartel’s warehouse thanks in no small measure to Lizzy (Mireille Enos), the team’s only female, who has infiltrated the gang by posing as the kingpin’s girlfriend. So much money is found that no one will mind the team hiding £10 million in the sewer pipes to be divided amongst them after they blow up the building to hide the evidence.
When they return, however, the money has disappeared. Breacher has to deal with the fall out when the strongly-knit team turn on one another and when his boss (Martin Donovan) learns of the theft and puts the team under investigation.
Accustomed to the adrenalin fixes that are a staple of their dangerous assignments, the team grows antsy in limbo, all the more so when it seems the cartel is enacting revenge for the loss of the millions by killing off the team one by one. Breacher realises that Lizzy’s fixes are coming not from adrenalin, but from a drug addiction that this jeopardizing her job and her marriage to Monster (Sam Worthington), a key member of the team.
Ayer is the fabulously successful script writer behind dark, gritty cop dramas such as S.W.A.T., Training Day and End of Watch (which he also directed), all of which portray a form of (usually) male bonding, characteristic of those who put their lives on the line for their job and buddy. In End of Watch, two good cops pay the price for pursuing a crime that is out of their jurisdiction, simply because of their code of honour. In Training Day, a promising rookie is corrupted by a seasoned veteran cop who was teaching the rookie survival skills.
They are not undercover, but depend on informants to do their job, and live in a squalid world that affects their personal lives. The state pay cheque is a derisory compensation and kickbacks seem justified. The moral of the story seems to be that in order to survive in a rotten environment you have to be as tough and as brutal as the enemy.
Sabotage goes one step further and shows how the most successful undercover agents find it difficult to turn off their adopted personas. Lizzy had to snort cocaine and perhaps do harder drugs to be a credible gangster’s moll, while her DEA comrades had to become as ruthless as the men they were pretending to be.
Everything, it seems, has a price and a limit, and even the tightest knit group can be sabotaged where money is concerned and trust is broken. With so much to say about the nature of undercover work, it’s a shame that Sabotage is sabotaged by its own message and panders, as the box office demands, to the audience who value the gore, car chases, and gratuitous violence over the insight.
Joyce Glasser – MT film reviewer
