"Sabotage" is an appropriate title for the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, since its many action and suspense elements are routinely undermined by a sloppy assemblage.
A hyperviolent tale from complicated-cop chronicler David Ayer ("Training Day," "End of Watch"), the film is about a renegade DEA task force whose members are mysteriously eliminated one by one in the wake of a botched cartel takedown. "Sabotage" was designed to give the grizzled ex-governor, playing the group's veteran leader, a shoot'em-up vehicle bolstered by Ayer's patented macho realism.
The two templates often make for a chaotic mismatch, however, with hackneyed trash-talking humor resting uneasily alongside the unrelentingly grim (Arnold's character's cartel-tortured family), while the handheld camera grittiness feels ill-conceived for a thin, obvious whodunit filled with luridly, lovingly filmed gore and over-the-top action.
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All along, Arnold's team of undercover agents — an ongoing grunt-off led by Joe Manganiello, Terrence Howard, Sam Worthington, Josh Holloway and a cackling, crazy-eyed Mireille Enos — come off less like hardened, chummy law enforcement vets than a central casting biker club with an operatic idea of scuzzball charm.
