Although “Sabotage” has an impressive cast, the film never manages to be more than mindless violence with terribly written dialogue spread throughout.

“Sabotage” follows a team of DEA agents led by Agent John “Breacher” Warthon, Arnold Swartzenegger. While raiding a drug filled warehouse, the team steals ten million dollars by slipping the money through the building’s sewer system, leading to the death of one of the team and an explosive end to the rest of the money left behind. The team quickly discovers that the money has disappeared and that the FBI is investigating the missing money. Six months later, the team is reinstated, but they quickly find they have larger problems than missing money.

I was kind of excited about this movie mainly because of the great cast list, and on a lot of counts I was impressed with the acting in “Sabotage.” Schwarzenegger was particularly compelling as Agent Breacher, and even though the film’s unrelenting and remorseless violence it is still hard not to be rooting for Breacher. I was also especially impressed by Sam Worthington as Agent James “Monster” Murray. His character experiences a lot of difficult situations in the film and Murray is one of the few of the team members that seem conflicted about the teams actions.

Even though there are few good performances in the film, the plot and dialogue are overall pretty bad. The few short interactions between Agents Caroline Brentwood, Olivia Williams, and her partner Darius Jackson, Harold Perrineau, seem forced and out of place, and the dialogue between the team members often sounds like what you would hear from a thirteen-year-old in a match of “Call of Duty.” At most, the writing is lazy and unoriginal. Even the plot seems randomly put together, with characters acting completely against their set personalities for the sake of “surprise.”

The action sequences in “Sabotage” are not anything too impressive, but I did think the sequences in which the team was clearing drug houses were well done. The film is also surprisingly gory, and there are a lot of times that “Sabotage” shows things other, similar action films would leave to the imagination. There were some legitimately shocking moments in the film, and that’s coming from a big horror fan.

“Sabotage” is not a great movie. Director David Ayer has proven he can do better in his excellent cop drama “End of Watch,” making it even more of a disappointment that “Sabotage” is so lame.

2/5