Book Review: Sycamore Row – Grisham Brings Back Jake Brigance

Sycamore Row
By John Grisham
Doubleday (2014)
ISBN: 978-0385537131

Book Review: Sycamore Row – Grisham Brings Back Jake Brigance

Sycamore Row by John Grisham is a patiently constructed novel with deep moral conflicts, multilayered characters, and carefully developed storylines that keep intertwining until everything culminate in a final verdict. This is not a violent page-turner or a fast-moving action suspense, such as The firm or other Grisham novels, but a fully developed legal drama with deep roots in the good old South.

Sycamore Row picks up where Grisham’s very first novel left off. A Time to Kill (1988) was famously written by Grisham when he was still a young attorney, who rose up at dawn to put in an hour or two of writing before starting his lawyerly day.  The result was a story that combined complex legal, moral and human issues seamlessly, a novel many considered to be Grisham’s best book. Sycamore Row does justice to its prequel as it delivers equivalent intensity within a similar social unease in the context of whites and blacks facing injustice, adjudication and redemption.

Attorney Jack Brigance is back with the new case, almost as unpopular as the Hailey murder case in A Time to Kill. In Sycamore Row, he is tasked with defending the handwritten will of the wealthiest citizen of Ford County, Seth Hubbard, who killed himself after a long battle with cancer. The handwritten will cancels an earlier will, prepared by a prestigious law firm, that left his fortune to his children and grandchildren. The last minute, handwritten will bequeaths the bulk of Hubbard’s fortune to his black maid. The ensuing battle brings onto Grisham's wide canvas a large number of characters, including the unlikely heiress and her many family members, the disinherited family of the deceased, and many lawyers representing various parties and interests. We’re back at the Clanton courthouse before Judge Atlee, where the scars from last year’s Hailey trial have not yet healed.

Grisham is very good at weaving social issues into legal and human conflicts. In Sycamore Row, he does it again with issues of wealth and racism in the context of southern white-black history. The large cast of characters might be hard to follow throughout the long story, but the main players are well-developed and as alive and human as the characters in A Time to Kill. Sycamore Row takes us on a detailed journey, from the moment of the suicide through the discovery of the various legal documents and shocking facts (before and during the trial). The story leads to a satisfying conclusion that ties up closely with the painful and shameful past of injustice (and worse) in the deep South, going back all the way to the era that followed actual slavery with crimes no less horrendous.

In summary, for lovers of legal drama and trial fiction, Sycamore Road is as good as it gets. For astute readers, some surprises may not be wholly surprising, and to readers with professional legal background, some courtroom developments might seem unrealistic. But this is no more than nitpicking because, in all fairness, a real-life trial transcript will never make for an exciting novel, which must move along without getting stuck in the mind-numbing mud of legal humdrum. With Sycamore Row, John Grisham keeps up the pace, builds up the suspense, and makes us think hard and feel deeply while we turn the pages. True to the reputation he has built since A Time To Kill, Grisham is at the top of his game.

* Avraham Azrieli writes novels and screenplays.  www. AzrieliBooks.com

Book Review: Sailing Alone Around the World: First Solo Circumnavigator Tells His Story.

Sailing Alone Around The World
By Joshua Slocum
New York Century Co. (1901) (Pan American edition. Illustrated by Thomas Forgarty and George Varian.) (Currently available from various publishers. )
ISBN: 978-0486203263
Subject(s): Memoir, adventure, sailing.


Book Review: Sailing Alone Around the World - First Solo Circumnavigator Tells His Story.

Sailing Alone Around the World is a firsthand autobiographical story of Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail singlehandedly around the world. The book, first published in 1901, would be considered an “old book" if not for the fact that, by any other measure, it is a timeless story. Slocum’s personal words, illustrations, and maps combine to create a literary gem that serves as a memoir of adventure travel, a motivational and spiritual guide, and a lesson in modesty and resilience.

Sailing Alone Around the World is the story of an aging sea captain who, in 1893, found himself out of work, out of prospects, out of plans, and out of dreams, but somehow managed to put himself back to work, create his own prospect, make a daring plan, and pursue a new dream. In doing so, Slocum not only succeeded in realizing his seemingly impossible dream, but also succeeded in turning himself into a record-setting global hero, whose voyage was followed closely by newspapers in every country in the world. His is a timeless story of courage, of defying the odds and the naysayers, and of changing the world of sailing—and of dreaming—forever.

Before 1895, Joshua Slocum was a professional ship captain in an era of transition from sailing ships to steam ships. Like many commercial captains of that generation, he took his family along on the ships he captained while delivering cargo from port to port in different parts of the world. Rather than be away from his family for months or years at the time, his wife and children traveled with him. But in an era that life expectancy hovered somewhere in the mid-forties, Slocum at fifty found himself unemployed and without prospects of future employment. An acquaintance gifted him the decrepit remains of a small boat called the Spray. It was a 37-foot oyster sloop, whose wood had rotten away and left little of its original structure and none of its seaworthiness.

Slocum, an endlessly curios self-educated maritime expert had a good working knowledge of shipbuilding, which he applied to restoring the Spray, bringing it back to its proud, seagoing past. The boat was designed for coastal work, not for ocean crossing, but that did not stop Slocum. After he sailed the Spray locally up and down the New England coast, a publisher suggested a journey around the world—alone! No one has ever done that, let along in a small sailboat, but Slocum was undeterred.

Sailing Alone Around the World chronicles Slocum’s three-year journey, beginning in 1895.  He crossed the Atlantic to Gibraltar, then back west to South America, struggled valiantly through the traitorous Strait of Magellan, and sailed across the Pacific. He paid visits to various islands, visited New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, and then crossed the Atlantic for the third time, arriving back in Massachusetts with his sailing log at over 46,000 miles.

Slocum writes in a conversational, unassuming voice of a man who knows what he is doing and faces the elements with even temper and a cool mind. His descriptions and illustrations of fascinating foreign lands, many of them unexplored at that time, as well as sea and land animals, are priceless. The challenges that nature threw in his way across the vast oceans nearly destroyed him and the Spray many times. He faced pirates, savages, thieves, and a variety of mechanical and technical breakdowns, each potentially fatal. Defying all odds, he returned home to write the book while becoming a household name and serving as a role model for countless courageous sailors who risk their lives circumnavigating the globe even today.

The book’s fluid prose is clear and straightforward so that even the modern reader quickly forgets how long ago it was written. Between the lines, we can tell that Slocum was a humorous man, who took life seriously, but didn’t take himself too seriously. He risked his life repeatedly in a pursuit of a dream, but he writes about it with no pretentions. On the contrary, he makes it sound as if anyone could have done it.

An amusing anecdote tells of Slocum’s meeting with the popular, long-time president of the South African Republic, Paul Kruger, a man of German descent who was deeply religious. When Slocum was introduced to President Kruger as someone who was sailing around the world, the president became upset and insisted that Slocum was selling on the world, not around it. There followed a meeting with the president's team of scientists who were busy proving (at the president’s insistance) that the world was indeed flat and not round as most of people knew. With his typical humor, which got him through other tight spots throughout his long journey, Slocum made light of the disagreement and agrees to consider the world flat while he was on land. Thus earning President Kroger's affection, Slocum enjoyed extensive sightseeing trips across the magnificent South African topographical wonders, vibrant wildlife, and fascinating tribal cultures.

Even when describing horrendous conditions and near-death experiences at sea, the author tells his story matter-of-factly, explaining how he contended with each crisis in a practical and logical way. When he describes how he fell off his boat during a violent storm while trying to change sails, he mentions casually the fact that he had never learned how to swim. “What is the point?” He asks. In other words, it was the opinion of this lifelong seaman that, when a person falls off in the middle of the ocean, he is better off drowning quickly than treading water for long time only to suffer a slow death. Considering that his trip took place before radio or any of the modern communication devices that and can alert rescuers the distress, his logic appears sound, though extreme.

In summary, Sailing Alone Around the World is a fascinating story, well written, and suspenseful. It provides a snapshot of an old world, barely on the verge of modernity, yet it creates a panoramic snapshot that provides unique perspective and a spectrum of details without comparison. For those who love sailing, or any kind of extreme adventure, this book is obviously a must. Yet its appeal would be strong for anyone who appreciates human stories of overcoming incredible odds and setting a new path for others to follow. Reading Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World is as close as it gets to the literary equivalent of taking a journey around the world.

Avraham Azrieli writes novels and screenplays. www.AzrieliBooks.com

Film Review: The Big Wedding (2013): De Niro, Keaton, Sarandon, and Heigl Deliver a Modern Family Farce

The Big Wedding (2013)

89 min; Comedy

Tagline: A long-divorced couple fakes being married as their family unites for a wedding.

Director: Justin Zackham

Writers: Justin Zackham (screenplay), Jean-Stéphane Bron (motion picture "Mon frère se marie")

Stars: Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Ben Barnes, Topher Grace

Film Review: The Big Wedding (2013): De Niro, Keaton, Sarandon, and Heigl Deliver a Modern Family Farce

The Big Wedding is part comedy, part parody and part jeopardy game of who is who, who is with whom, and who the hell could have so much fun when your character's backstory foretells a tragedy. Yet, The Big Wedding somehow manages to deliver big laughs, deep sighs, and even a few wet tears. And it's no wonder, as the film is basically a ruckus and joyful get-together of mostly A-list stars on a quickie break from serious roles.

The patriarch of the groom’s family, Don, is played by Robert De Niro, who recaps his Fokker Family role, but without the paranoid spy gear. Here, De Niro is an aging sculptor who, while not shown actually sculpting anything, sports the expected long locks, facial hair and behavioral oddities, perhaps resulting from the stress of keeping all the character’s fictional balls in the air: He is (1) the father of a young physician, Jared (Topher Grace), who still lives at home and is abstinent from sex (unlike his father), (2) the father of an estranged daughter, Lyla (Katherine Heigl), who loves/hates him, (3) the adoptive father of Alejandro (Ben Barnes), who is about to marry the daughter of the deeply disliked couple next door, (4) the ex-husband of his children’s mother, Ellie (Diane Keaton), a woman he cheated on with her best friend, yet he still loves her (can you blame him?), (5) the lover, in a long  cohabitating relationship, of another beautiful woman, Bebe (Susan Sarandon) who is Don’s ex-wife’s ex-best-friend, and who helped him finish raising the children and complete a lot of house renovations, (6) a recovering alcoholic who still drinks, (7) the host of the wedding, including Alejandro’s biological mother, Madonna (Patricia Rae), a devout Catholic whose abhorrence of divorce forces De Niro to also pretend that he is (8) still married to his ex-wife. If for nothing else, it’s worthwhile to watch The Big Wedding just for the opportunity to see De Niro juggle all these conflicting roles without rolling his eyes (on camera) even once.

Diane Keaton as Ellie plays the betrayed wife, who had left Don after he cheated on her with her best friend, Bebe. Ellie has been away from her children, from the house of her dreams, and from the husband she loved. Now she's back for the wedding, and upon her arrival, she surreptitiously watches her husband fooling around with his live-in lover (her ex-best friend) in the kitchen. But despite all that potentially enraging past events, throughout the movie Diane Keaton seems happy to the point of constant giggling. If there is any bitterness or resentment, we never see it. She is warm to her ex-husband and to her ex-best friend and tries to make everybody as giddily happy as she manages to be. Perhaps Keaton had so much fun making this movie with such a terrific group of people that she couldn’t bother with her character’s painful past or otherwise muster the appearance of hostility towards those who had basically destroyed her perfect life.

The deepest feelings expressed in this film belong to Lyla (Katherine Heigl), the estranged daughter who had taken her mother's side and distanced herself from her father (and is now experiencing a breakup in her own marriage). Heigl’s emotional portrayal of this complex character reliably conveys the complex array of feelings a daughter experiences towards such complex parents. Yet she manages to go along with the over-the-top spirit of this movie, with dramatic fainting and projectile vomiting. As always, Heigl is a class act.

Susan Sarandon (as Bebe) similarly delivers an expert performance in a complicated and contradictory role that pulls in different directions. The real kicker, though, is Robin Williams, a funnyman whose brilliant potential seems to be constrained here by scripted dialogue and tight directing, barely allowing him to show his incredible talent in a role of Father Moinighan, an alcoholic, racist, and cynical priest. One can only imagine what Williams would have done with this role if he were only allowed to go wild.

Alejandro, played by Ben Barnes, is the adopted son turned Harvard graduate and multi-linguist, who is fluent in Spanish, English, Chinese and much more. The young Barnes manages to deliver an excellent portrayal of a character who could have appeared silly. He is charming, emotional, and funny. His fiancé, Missy (Amanda Seyfried) also has to balance conflicting pressures, especially in contending with her parents, Muffin (Christine Ebersole) and Barry (David Rasche), who are rich/poor, snobby/pathetic, and righteous/sex sinners. Seyfried capably goes along with the insanity underlying this story.

In summary, The Big Wedding is a farce of modern life with every known complication thrown in for good measure. Moviegoers should expect a riotous yet improbably story delivered by a group of incredibly good actors having fun on the screen. In fact, they're having so much fun that it’s hard to suspend disbelief about the huge bags of skeletons that each one of them is supposed to be schlepping around. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter as The Big Wedding is meant to be as good as fresh popcorn—light and airy, fun and crunchy, and not intended for the haughty, discriminating connoisseur.

Avraham Azrieli writes novels and screenplays. www.AzrieliBooks.com

Film Review: Centurion (2010): Michael Fassbender and Olga Kurylenko in Mesmerizing Roman Era Action

Film Review: Centurion (2010)
 97 min  -  Action | Adventure | Drama  -  30 July 2010 (USA)
Tagline: A splinter group of Roman soldiers fight for their lives behind enemy lines after their legion is decimated in a devastating guerrilla attack.
Director: Neil Marshall
Writer: Neil Marshall
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko

Film Review: Centurion (2010): Michael Fassbender and Olga Kurylenko in Mesmerizing Roman Era Action

For those who love historic action films from Spartacus to Gladiator and 300, Centurion is a wonderful addition to a genre that gets better with time as special effects technology advances to stunning heights.

What Centurion does better than most historic films is maintaining a fair balance. The common inclination among moviemakers is to portray one side as the bad guys and the other as the good guys, making life simpler for viewers at the cost of making films that aren’t lifelike. In reality, as we know, both sides in any human conflict—from major political conflicts to religious, business and personal conflicts—are convinced of their own moral high ground. Centurion takes an unusually brave approach by forgoing moral clarity. It walks a fine line between an honestly brutal portrayal of Rome as an expansionist, violent and oppressive empire, on the one hand, and the individual soldier’s personal struggle for honor, fierce loyalty to his comrades, and human yearning for survival, on the other hand.

Michael Fassbender in the lead role as Centurion Quintus Dias manages to perform in a breathtaking spectrum of scenes, from superb fighting action to physical suffering to emotional and psychological ups and downs. In his own way, Centurion Dias redeems Roman evildoing by being such a fine person, who tries to do the right thing under terrible circumstances and against conflicting loyalties.

Writer and Director Neil Marshall shows an uncanny ability to deliver almost non-stop violence in a series of cruel and bloody fights—most of which are face to face and murderously intimate—but do it all without either side making a clear case of good or bad. The invading Roman oppressors become the hunted underdogs, and the local rebels take on the inhuman methods of their foreign enemy—and even surpass it. The occasional voiceover of Centurion Dias telling his story gives the movie a personal tone of reflection, anchoring the disparate action scene in an underlying story of a man who is clearly decent and honorable.

Supporting Fassbender/Centurion Dias as his fellow Roman soldiers are a capable group of actors, including Liam Cunningham and Noel Clarke. Imogen Poots does an excellent job as a castaway witch who lives in the woods and has no loyalties but to whom she choses (guess who...).

But it is Olga Kurylenko, as Etain the mute, who is truly Centurion Dias’s nemesis—a role she performs with great skill. At times she is enchanting, at times frightening, and always she is spellbinding. Without a single line of dialogue, Kurylenko dominates the screen not only with her bursts of violence and deadly capable fighting, but with her body language, facial expressions, and mannerism. It is fair to say that Kurylenko’s eyes speak louder and clearer than the words of many of the other characters. And with a few facts sprinkled here and there by other characters, Marshall gives us enough information to understand why Etain does what she does and why it’s justified.

Special mention goes to the film’s cinematography, by Sam McCurdy as director of photography, which takes us from the expected—ancient England in harsh winter (or is it their summer—who can tell?) with wide vistas of a beautiful landscape to the minute details of primitive life of that harsh time. The visual experience is intense to the point of enabling the viewers to feel the cold, smell the stench, and touch the roughness of both garments and skin. Ilan Eshkeri composed the music, which ties it all together at a quality rarely heard by moviegoers, lifting us to emotional highs and sinking us to desperate lows along this journey of courage, cruelty, and the extremes of human frailty and strength.

In summary, Centurion delivers a classic historic film with all components working together like clockwork. It is an entertaining and often surprising action story with an excellent cast and a well-deserved (and well-executed) climax, topped by an unexpected yet logical twist at the end—which begets a satisfying resolution for the unquestionable hero, Centurion Dias. Highly recommended!

Avraham Azrieli writes novels and screenplays. www.AzrieliBooks.com

Film Review: The Human Stain (2003): Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman and Ed Harris Bring a Phillip Roth Masterpiece to Life

The Human Stain (2003)

106 min  -  Drama | Romance | Thriller

Tagline: A former college professor, hiding a 50-year-old secret of his race, sweetens the bitterness of his destroyed career with an unlikely romance with a younger woman, haunted by her own dark past and a malicious ex husband.

Director: Robert Benton

Writers: Philip Roth (novel), Nicholas Meyer (screenplay)

Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise

Film Review: The Human Stain (2003): Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman and Ed Harris Bring Phillip Roth Masterpiece to Life

This film takes on a daunting, herculean task: to adapt Philip Roth’s novel, The Human Stain, to the screen. To successfully adapt such a complex, emotional and tragic story, painful choices must be made by the screenwriter, the director, and everyone else down the line of production. This process of adaptation from page to screen requires wise choices, creating a tower of cards, with each card representing an artistic choice. A single bad choice, therefore, is like a weak card that brings the whole thing crashing down.

Adaptation choices start with the cutting of a painstakingly detailed story, as it appears on the many pages of a novel, to a quick, under-two-hours visual dramatization in a series of scenes. In other words, a plot must be created by cherry picking actions, conflicts, words, and images from the novel (or invented outside the source material when necessary). Then come the casting choices which, like settings and locations (but much worse) can make or break the spirit of the visual rendition and cripple the film before the camera even turns on. And then there are the performance choices, subtle but not less fateful, which actors and director make about the manner of the actual acting in each scene, both physical and vocal, aiming to maximize the effect of the cast’s combined talents.

From generalities to specifics, the adaptation of The Human Stains to the screen represents many painful choices.

First, the plot, adapted from the novel, is faithful overall to the written story. Those familiar with the novel will notice variations and omissions, which might be missed but do not diminish the overall effect of the story.

The main voice telling the story is that of Roth’s creation, the author Nathan Zukerman, played by Gary Sinise. From a storytelling respect, this works very well as the story goes back and forth in time, sometimes decades ago, to inject pieces of information needed for the viewer’s understanding of the events—past and present. Zukerman’s unique voice, oh so memorable and familiar to Roth's readers, is here. Sinise’s acting, as always, is excellent and sharp. But the original sin here—casting—takes away much of what could have been. Zukerman is supposed to be aging and infirm, a likely contemporary of the main character, while Sinise is youthful, vibrant and barely 40. Thus, even Sinise’s considerable talent is not enough, and Zukerman’s presence at the core of the story is greatly diminished.

The leading character, Coleman Silk, is played by two actors.

The young Silk, played by Wentworth Miller, is well cast and perfectly acted. Not many actors could pass for a black young man pretending to be white and, moreover, make that terrible decision believable both in its reasoning and its practical implication in his life. Miller does it all extremely well, including scenes as a young boxer, a scholar, a lover, and a son. His pain and joy are both apparent, and he is a pleasure to watch. His mother, Mrs. Silk, is equally well played by Anna Deavere Smith, as is his father by Harry Lennix.

The old Professor Silk is played by Anthony Hopkins. While his acting is as wonderful as always, the casting choice here again delivers a painful blow to the adaptation credibility. The viewer would search in vain for that hint of African roots (or resemblance to his younger self played by Miller) in Mr. Hopkins's appearance or behavior. And while he delivers an excellent performance both visually and vocally, the role unfortunately fails to deliver the emotional heat and hurtful jolts that Roth's novel so successfully manages with words alone.

Nicole Kidman as Faunia Farley, the young woman who's Silk’s last love, does an excellent job at bringing that complex and troubled character to life. While Kidman might be too beautiful and sophisticated to pass for a cleaning woman/dairy farm hand, her acting makes up for much of the discrepancy. Ed Harris, as her ex-husband, is wonderfully creepy and full of pain at the same time—a diamond in the rough, literally.

In summary, the film adaptation of The Human Stain is not the screen equivalent of the novel due to unfortunate casting decisions. Yet it is well worth watching, not only because of the wonderful cast of talented actors and the moments of screen magic that remain forever in our memories, but also due to its excellent storytelling quality in delivering a dramatic rendition of Roth’s unique novel and the human imperfections it so aptly explores.

Avraham Azrieli writes novels and screenplays. www.AzrieliBooks.com

Angel Heart (1987) – Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro are young and restless in a Supernatural Murder Mystery

Film Review: Angel Heart (1987)
113 min  -  Horror | Mystery | Thriller
Tagline: In 1955 NYC, PI Harry Angel is hired to find a missing WWII veteran who doesn't want to be found. The investigation takes Angel to New Orleans and the depth of black magic and ultimate evil.
Director: Alan Parker
Writers: William Hjortsberg (novel), Alan Parker (screenplay)
Stars: Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet

Angel Heart (1987) – Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro are young and restless in a Supernatural Murder Mystery

In this well designed period film (1955, with multiple flashbacks), Rourke delivers a captivating performance as Harry Angel, private eye. His case starts with the familiar routine of all such tales when a mystery man, Louis Cyphre (played by the indomitable Robert De Niro), hires him to find an old-time musician/WWII veteran who is missing under strange circumstances. Angel’s search, though, takes him from the ordinary to the highly unordinary, from Harlem to New Orleans, from New York music to southern black magic and sweaty white privilege.

Along the way, Angel experiences recurring bloody memories and actual-yet-inexplicable gruesome occurrences that transform him and the movie—on the go!—from private eye to film noir to serial killer mystery to horror and, finally, to supernatural.

In a glowing testament to Alan Parker’s abilities as writer and director, the gradual transformation of Rourke/Angel and his story through all these starkly different genres is achieved without a single jarring moment. It is an almost perfect arch, taken with the subtle transmuting of the visual sights, the surrounding settings, the changing weather, the actors’ outfits and body changes, and most cleverly, the noises that we hear as Angel descends on his painful journey towards the ghastly conclusion of his fateful investigation. It is interesting to note that Parker’s next film was Mississippi Burning, another excellent cinematic expediting to the southern United States of the good old days.

Particularly enchanting is the performance of then 19-years-old Lisa Bonet, who plays 17-years-old Epiphany Proudfoot, a young mother who is the daughter of the missing man. Especially memorable is Bonet’s acting in an explicit sex scene with the almost twice older Rourke, who makes love to a topless Bonet in a rapidly rising ferocity, with flashback images of blood and brutality mixed in with the lovemaking to the point where past and present become indistinguishable.

In summary, Angel Heart is an unsettling film done incredibly well, with excellent acting by Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet and a wonderful supporting cast. The moral and existential questions it raises, while not necessarily answered by the story, are valid and intriguing long after the credits have run their course.

Avraham Azrieli is the author of ten published books, most recently “Deborah Rising” (HarperCollins 2016) a novel portraying the dramatic rise of the first woman to lead a nation in human history. www.AzrieliBooks.com

Film Review: Sabotage (2014) - Schwarzenegger is Back with a Vengeance

Sabotage (2014)
109 min  -  Action | Crime | Drama
Tagline: Members of an elite DEA task force find themselves being taken down one by one after they rob a drug cartel safe house.
Director: David Ayer
Writers: Skip Woods, David Ayer
Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olivia Williams, Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard

Film Review: Sabotage (2014) - Schwarzenegger is Back with a Vengeance

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s screen presence has not diminished since his early days in The Running Man, Total Recall, and the Terminator movies. Yes, he has aged, but every man would wish to age like that. Moreover, in Sabotage he shows a certain Clint Eastwood quality, combining a crusty veteran law enforcer who’s seen it all, the physical capabilities of a much younger man, and the capacity for violent outbursts of a teenager. In other words, with Sabotage, Schwarzenegger fulfills his famous promise -- "I'll be back!" -- and he does it with a vengeance.

Sabotage is an action movie, and as such, it delivers. There is a great deal of violence, including shooting, hacking, punching, bombing, and more shooting, all topped off with bloody body parts galore. The dialogue, if you can call it that, is driven by incessant foul language, not only the classic four letter word, which is used on average twice in every sentence by most characters, but multiple variations of cussing bravado on steroids to the point of becoming borderline comical.

But Sabotage is not about witty dialogue, original character study, or clever plot. In fact, the plot here is a mere vehicle on which all the violence is loaded up and delivered with excellent cinematography and the latest special effects.

Sabotage is the latest of many action movies whose story is driven by the unbearable grieving of someone who lost beloved family members to evil, violent men. The lead character is understandably pushed to irrational and extreme actions by unbearable grief, thirst for revenge, and desire for a violent payoff. In Sabotage, the evil guys are drug cartels, the dead family is the wife and son of the commander of a DEA team, and the extreme action he takes has the good guys commit a cardinal sin that results in betrayal, loss, and deaths—many, many deaths. This is not an original storyline, but Sabotage does it well, with good acting and believable, if exaggerated, tough-guy camaraderie.

What perhaps distinguishes Sabotage more than anything is the absolute dedication to realistic images of human violence and depravity. While we have grown accustomed to squirting blood and hacked body parts in horror movies (and the occasional shocking scenes in mysteries and thrillers) Sabotage takes bloodletting explicitness to uncommon levels of butcher-shop clarity and detail. Perhaps it’s an attempt to compliment Quentin Tarantino by imitation, but Sabotage lacks the redeeming emotional depth of Django Unchained, the cocky charm of Inglorious Brothers, or the visual artistry of Kill Bill.

Not that Sabotage is flat. Schwarzenegger is surprisingly capable and convincing both in his grief and in his care for his team, in addition to delivering great action scenes with aplomb. His character’s moral choices are deeply flawed, and he is believable in that role. In fact, while Sabotage type-cast him in a role similar to his older muscle movies, Schwarzenegger shows an uncanny ability to perform a range of emotions that could be a hint of things to come--in a trajectory similar to Clint Eastwood.

Supporting Schwarzenegger here are very capable actors, including (on his team of agents) Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard and Mireille Enos. But it is Olivia Williams who dominates the screen with a superb performance as a homicide detective who is torn between growing affection and rising suspicion, a classic heart v. mind conflict, which she delivers with subtlety and skill that foretell star roles to come.

In summary, despite its basic flaw of overdone crudeness and bloodiness, Sabotage delivers excellent action, consistent suspense and a familiar yet nuanced plotline, all spiced up with good acting and intense realism. It won’t win an Oscar, but it’s damned good entertainment.

Avraham Azrieli writes novels and screenplays. www.AzrieliBooks.com