Sabotage's tension, sex, and remarkably natural paramilitary banter flow right from the playbook of director and co-writer David Ayer, who's made an underappreciated career mining the darker side of patriotism and the law, turning heroes into villains and then back again. Ayer also keeps Sabotage from coming off like a "Schwarzenegger" movie. Ayer gets the best of his star—the steel, the smirk, the boorishness—but reins him in by leaving him the understated leader of a hotheaded ensemble. And also by drenching everything in blood. by Denis C. Theriault