Best of the Blogs: Dominic Corry: Arnie drops another stinker

Herald online

24 Dec, 2014 11:00 PM2 mins to read

Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Photo / Getty Images

It’s been a busy year so we can’t blame you if you missed some of our blogs. Over the next two weeks, we’ll bring you the best of our blogs from across entertainment.

Dominic Corry examines Arnie's fall from grace in his latest film.

If there's one consistent thread running through this blog, it is that I love Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger. A lot.

I've written quite a bit about how it's a tumultuous time to be an Arnie fan, considering he's yet to experience a bonafide success in the post-politics part of his film career.

Seeing him play second banana to Sly Stallone in The Expendables series is tough, but the sad fact is, the Expendables "movies" (they're more liked scripted personal appearances) have marked the only times Arnie's glorious visage has seen the inside of a theatre in this country since 2003's Terminator: Rise of the Machines (I don't count 'digital' Arnie from Terminator: Salvation).

There were originally plans for his latest film, Sabotage, to get a cinematic release in New Zealand, but as was in the case with 2013's The Last Stand, which featured Arnie's first post-politics leading role, Sabotage's lack of success at the American box office sealed its fate as a straight-to-DVD premiere here, and it was released last week.

Unlike The Last Stand, which is frankly awesome and essential viewing for any proper Arnie fan, Sabotage deserves its undignified position alongside other direct-to-DVD movies starring whoever the contemporary equivalent of Don 'The Dragon' Wilson is.

Arnold Schwarzenegger with Harrison Ford in The Expendables 3.

I go into any Arnie movie very much wanting to like it - my blind devotion was such that I even thought his last film, Escape Plan (also a DVD premiere) could work. As anyone who's seen it knows, it did not.

Sabotage, however, exhibited some genuine potential. The cast was dense, and heavy: Sam Worthington (Avatar), Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow), Joe Manganiello (True Blood), Mireille Enos (World War Z), Olivia Williams (Dollhouse) and Josh Holloway aka that incorrigable scoundrel Sawyer from Lost.

Somehow I managed to ignore the alarm bells that rang when the first image of Worthington looking ridiculous appeared. ...