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'Sabotage': Action, more action, and yet more preposterous action

In Sabotage, a high-voltage, low-coherence action movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the head of a rowdy renegade DEA crew. Violent, profane, flatulent, and heavily tattooed, they're like the motorcycle-gang version of The Magnificent Seven.

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Breacher in "Sabotage." Action, more action, and yet more confusing, preposterous action.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Breacher in "Sabotage." Action, more action, and yet more confusing, preposterous action.Read more

 In Sabotage, a high-voltage, low-coherence action movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the head of a rowdy renegade DEA crew.

Violent, profane, flatulent, and heavily tattooed, they're like the motorcycle-gang version of The Magnificent Seven.

There's Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Monster (Sam Worthington), Neck (Josh Holloway), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Pyro (Max Martini), and Tripod (Kevin Vance).

The baddest of the bunch is Lizzy (The Killing's Mireille Enos), who gives a buccaneering performance that is riveting - and at times verging on ludicrous.

From the start, an empty-your-clips assault on a drug cartel's mansion/fortress, Sabotage weaves a confusing story. Things grow only murkier as red herrings start surfacing in the plot. But the movie is crammed with so much action razzle-dazzle, it actually might make more sense with the sound muted.

Sabotage makes the first of several abrupt tonal detours when Olivia Williams (Dollhouse) enters the story as a homicide detective trying to figure out who is knocking off members of Schwarzenegger's squad in ostentatiously elaborate ways.

Just when you think Sabotage, already a long and serpentine film, can't get any more befuddling, it throws in a spaghetti western coda.

This is the type of movie best enjoyed as a late-night indulgence on cable. Really late at night, when your eyes are still partially open, but your brain has called it quits.

215-854-4552 @daveondemand_tv

Sabotage

Directed by David Ayer. With Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Sam Worthington, Joe Manganiello. Distributed by Open Road.

Running time: 1 hour, 49 mins.

Parent's guide: R (graphic violence, nudity, sex, pervasive profanity, drug abuse)

Playing at: area theaters