“Sabotage” on MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray!

Former Navy Seal Michael Bishop was nearly killed on a gone awry Bosnia mission at the hands of former special forces soldier turned mercenary Jason Sherwood.  Three years and one court martial later, Bishop’s recently hired as a bodyguard for a wealthy businessman and his wife until a successful assassination on the businessman leaves Bishop as the prime suspect in the eyes of Special FBI Agent Louise Castle and his former Bosnia commander Nicholas Tollander now a spook with the CIA.  As Bishop strives to prove his innocence with the help of single mother Castle, looking to impress and rise in the agency to support her daughter, he’s determined to uncover an elaborate conspiracy that involves the FBI, CIA, and the man that put seven holes into him in Bosnia, Jason Sherwood, who enjoys the playful art of mercenary work.  The deep-rooted plot that exploited Bishop as a scapegoat to eliminate gunrunners plays out like a game of chess and each move is deadlier than the next. 

“Sabotage” is the 1996 independent, Canadian cloak-and-dagger thriller from “The Gate” and “I, Madman” director Tibor Takács and cowritten between Rick Filon (“The Redemption: Kickboxer 5”) and Michael Stokes (“Jungleground”).  “Sabotage’s” inspiration pulls from the simple, strategic game of chess where all the pieces, moves, and players are witnessed in plain sight in what is a tactical tornado of interagency spydom and the innocent are only the pawns in the middle, sacrificed to be a part of the puzzle to strike the monarchy behind the shadows on behalf of the across adversaries.  The Andy Emilio (“Shadow Builder”) produced and Ash R. Shan (“Lion Heart”) and Paul Wynn (“Tiger Claws III”) executively produced feature, shot in Toronto Canada (which also doubles for Bosnia in certain brushy areas), is a production of Applecreek Productions and presented by Imperial Entertainment. 

Working off another script from Rick Filon, the previous being “The Redemption : Kickboxer 5,” and hot off his humanoid cheetah role in John Frankenheimer’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau” remake, opposite Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, the mixed martial artist Mark Dacascos plays the setup and scorned Michael Bishop, disgraced by his own military organizations, and reduced to being a bodyguard for an unscrupulous businessman.  Despite being soft spoken, Dacascos has great charisma on screen that mixes greatly with his eclectic array of martial art fighting styles, such as Muay Thai and Kung Fu.  Dacascos is a shoe in for leading man material, which also includes his swarthy good looks, and does fill the shoes of being a blacklisted former Navy Seal now on the hunt for who burned him in a botched Bosnia mission years earlier.  However, Bishop’s early motivation speaks more toward his character than his need for revenge as Bishop is not aware that it was his former attempted murderer James Sherwood, played by the towering and formidable Tony Todd (“Candyman”), who whacked his client.  Bishop becomes obsessed with the case which speaks to his loyalty and his completist mentality to see something through.  Overshadowing the leading man is Sherwood as Tony Todd instincts with this character is to be a merciless and cutting with his smooth handiwork and jibe remarks, all the while doing the horrible things with a sociopathic smile on his face.  Opposite Dacascos, in a semi-love interest role, is the pre-“Matrix” Carrie Anne Moss as Special Agent Castle who has more complexity of character than Dacascos and Todd combined.  Castle is a struggling single-mother trying to make headway in her governmental career but hits a snag when her morality is checked as she must either stay the course and go along with corruption to obtain security for her daughter or do the righteous thing and unsnarl dishonestly at the highest level with extreme prejudice for her sake of her daughter’s life.  Between the three principal leads, Castle’s arc is the steepest and more stirring with internal conflict, a testament to Moss’s performance.  Graham Greene (“Antlers”), James Purcell (“Bloodwork”), John Neville (“Urban Legend”), Heidi von Palleske (“Dead Ringers”), and Richard Coulter make up the rest of the cast.

“Sabotage” is a down-the-rabbit hole spooktacular 90s thriller, and I don’t mean spooky as in scary.  What I’m referring to is the characters’ covert agencies, such as the spooks of the Counter-Intelligent Agencies, and far-reaching operations that meddle and deconstruct a what should be a tidy organizational design with pot-stirring double-crossing, even triple-crossing, narrative paths that can be a strain to keep straight.  The film’s prelude and core story span 3 years apart and connect while there’s a simultaneous backdrop narrative that’s also connects but only exclusively in exposition.  Audiences will have to hamster wheel their mental gears to connect the dots and keep up with the pacing in this ever-evolving plotline that keeps the action caffeinated with a winding, hard-target center.  Takács also stylizes “Sabotage” with bullet-tracking special effects, high impact shelling, and an indulgence of explosive blood squibs that elevates the independent picture to an upper-class of B movie and gives the feature an edge of fun and entertainment that dichotomizes it from the more slapdash action films of the mid-90s where sex-appeal played more of a role than any other kind of actual action. 

Number 60 on the spine of MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray, Tibor Takács’s “Sabotage” breathes new life into the crisscrossing, projectile-pursuing, scacchic espionage extraordinaire. The AVC encoded BD50 provides a 1080p high-def resolution presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. A well-suffused and maintained print results in an excellent detailing of pixels and a punchy-noir grading. Details on the 2K scan print are historically omitted here, like with many in the Rewind Collection catalogue, but “Sabotage” doesn’t feign to be a product of enhanced visual replication with an organically pleasing form with minimal grain and only one noted frame containing age or damage wear. The uncompressed English language LPCM 2.0 stereo has abundance of vitality, discerning the layers through the dual channel funnel. Range of melee fire power has individualized zenith occurrences rendered at the right synchronization and depth makes the distinction of foreground and background dialogue, ambience, and the sort. Speaking of dialogue (pun intended), the uncompressed encoding keeps faithful fidelity, an ample and adequate of clearly expressed conversations without ever sounding muddled or lost in the skirmish. Optional English subtitles are included. Special features are little light for a Rewind Collection bannered release but what’s available packs a wallop with two new interviews with stars Tony Todd and Mark Dacascos on Zoom, or whichever face time platform is being used, going through their recollection and thoughts of “Sabotage” from nearly three decades ago. A Mark Dacascos trailer reel rounds out the special feature content. The rigid slipcover contains the reprint of the original “Sabotage” poster in a mockup of a VHS case; however, this particular Rewind Collection cover composition has less flair to sell the VHS facsimile. Inside cover art of the clear Blu-ray Amaray case contains the same poster sheet but is reversible with a less-is-more one sheet. In the insert section is a folded mini-poster of the primary cover art and, opposite, the BD50 is pressed with a plastic-patterned, VHS-tape motif. The region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a 99-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Overall, a gratifying A/V and physical presentation of a mid-90’s, mid-level action-thriller encompassing a showcase of Mark Dacascos’s leading man chops as well as a different side to Tony Todd that isn’t encapsulated in the supernatural during the height of his career.

“Sabotage” on MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray!