Sabotage

Action star Mark Dacascos always seemed like too much of a nice guy to be a bad ass.  Working his way through video store favorites like Double Dragon and Kickboxer 5, no one could deny he had the skills, he just lacked the necessary attitude to rise above the fray.  So, it was great to see him get a chance to shine in 2019’s John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, even if it was too little too late. And it’s a treat to go back to 1996’s Sabotage, a conspiracy thriller that throws in the so many plot twists and familiar faces you might forget who you’re supposed to be rooting for.

Dacascos plays Michael Bishop, a former special forces vet who was dishonorably discharged and now works as a freelance bodyguard.   But when his latest client is assassinated, he teams with the investigating agent, Louise Castle (Carrie-Anne Moss), to outsmart a meddling CIA spook (Graham Greene) and take down a hired killer (Tony Todd) before he strikes again.

 

It may be Dacascos’ name above the title, but Sabotage is definitely Carrie-Anne Moss’s movie.  As the tough but sexy fed, her character was obviously written in the Agent Starling / Agent Scully mold, but Moss owns every scene she’s in, holding the camera’s attention with an underplayed performance while everyone else around her turns things up to eleven…even poor John Neville (Baron Munchausen), forced to deliver endless metaphors about chess and covert operatives.

 

Sabotage may lack the sort of action set-pieces we’ve come to expect, but director Tibor Takas (The Gate) picks and chooses his moments carefully.  At the very least the film looks like film and not an on-the-fly cash grab, with some truly impressive slow-motion exclamation points.  It won’t win over any new Dacascos fans into the fold – there’s only one roundhouse kick in the entire 90 minutes – but it does showcase the particular appeal of C-level ‘90s action thrillers. Which, after all, is the point of the MVD Rewind Collection!

 

This Blu-ray edition comes with a good-looking 1.78:1 transfer, self-shot interviews with Dacascos and Tony Todd, plus a slip-over and mini-poster.

 

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