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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Sabotage


Saw Sabotage last night. I'd been expecting just another dumb action movie, mindless entertainment for a Monday night. It wasn't bad. It had a nice, complicated plot with some unexpected twists. The dialogue was occasionally clever. And Arnold Schwarzenegger actually underacted, the first time I can ever recall seeing that.

The movie got mostly lousy reviews. Rottentomatoes.com gave it a 20% positive rating by critics, no surprise. The 37% rating by audiences was a little unexpected though: who goes to a Schwarzenegger flick about a group of rogue DEA agents expecting anything more than a shoot 'em up? (There was enough gore to sate the most bloodthirsty palate.)

But what I was most struck by were the two main female characters. In this strange, wondrous land called Hollywood, white policewomen evidently disparage their black male colleagues' masculinity, and intimidate big steroided up biker types. And female DEA agents evidently empty their machine guns clips into Mexican cartel members and then exult by pumping their fists in the air and bellowing with joy.

I watched the movie with an Afghanistan vet, who seemed to feel that this portrayal of swaggering, gun-toting females was, to paraphrase him, a tad misleading.

Poor guy. He must have just been with the wrong unit.

Verdict: worth watching, just for the insight into the Hollywood mindset.

2 comments:

secede said...

she has the fearsome musculature of kabbala madonna.

John Craig said...

Secede --
Ha! She's not quite as big, but she does have the definition. She's not on steroids, though, she evidently just gave birth to a son in late July of this year, so she must have gotten pregnant right after filming the movie.