There is a new franchise in town. It is named “6 Underground” and was directed by Michael Bay and produced by a team of Michael Bay, Ian Bryce, Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, and Don Granger for Netflix and starring Ryan Reynolds. The film is about a group of Americans who want to change the world by faking their deaths to avoid family distractions then proceeding to kill everyone who is bad and who the governments and CIA can’t touch. They are ruthless, quick shooters, fast with cars, and destructive. Just like Fast & Furious, just inferior.
Cliched concept, weak plot
We have seen this kind of group before, a lot of time. They want to make the world a better place by doing some of the vilest things known to mankind like killing a father just outside while the now-orphaned daughter, doll in hand, asks for her father. Like destroying dozens of vehicles and sending limbs into the sky during that chase in Florence Italy. Like killing kitchen staff and ship attendants, most of them armed with table knives. Messy, not strange.
We can forgive the above and we may not, but their plot stuck out like a whitlow-invested finger. Now, there is a bad leader in the middle eastern nation of Turgistan, Rovach, who is actually a composite of Erdogan, Syria’s Al-Bashir, and Gaddafi. He is corrupt, lives in tremendous affluence despite his people’s extreme poverty and nukes them with chemical bombs from time to time just so as to be in power. Here’s the hole, no one nukes his people just so as to demonstrate his power – it doesn’t stretch disbelief, it is just lazy writing. If the people nukes are harboring rebels and dissidents Rovach deems terrorists, if the people are trying to break away from Turgistan and Rovach nukes them in the guise of attacking their treasonous leader, if the people have taken arms to rid the nation of the president, then we will understand this. Michael Bay didn’t bother making this believable.
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There are also four of Rovach’s generals who are extremely corrupt and vain. All four of them arrive in Las Vegas to meet with some arms dealer of a sort. All of them. It doesn’t make sense, sending all your most trusted generals to the heart of capitalism where you are not loved. One will do; at most, two. But all four, impossible. And all of them love women and buss and are shameless in getting it. Easy for the Six to handle, easy for the plot, but too cheap a plotline.
Now Rovach has a brother whom he has in house arrest in a luxurious apartment and who somehow has a good heart and is the reluctant leader in the waiting. As soon as I saw him I knew he would be the saving grace of the people and that a rescue mission will happen. I wasn’t disappointed.
6 Underground: Overdoing it, overkilling it
Our review of Fast & Furious spin-off mentioned that if a show has no plot but can keep the viewer glued to the screen and can ask them from time to time if they are entertained and get mostly yes answers, then the film is good enough. What we didn’t mention but which is universally acknowledged is that too much of everything is a turn-off and “6 Underground” did this above board. The bloodshed was too much. I don’t know where they get the idea that an R-rated film cannot do things in proportions. Every blast-driven plot has a lot of moments of disbelief which you let slide in the context of the fine things the movie is offering just like Dwayne Johnson holding a plane from moving mid-air.
One reason why Michael Bay’s scenes look like overdoing it is that there is nothing spectacular. The scenes were just bogus. gross, and plentiful, nothing eye-catching like when Edris Elba’s bike rotates on its own and positions itself for a quick climb for that breath-taking chase. If you won’t show us anything thrilling, if it is all about chasings, clashes and crashes then we can as well just sit down and watch video games.
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Even the sex scenes were just quick, breathless and brutal. “Are you two making love or just fucking,” One asked Two and Three or Four and Five and the lady replied, “just fucking”. This is the truth. They are just shagging and it is just for the sake of distraction. No one is drawn emotionally, no aww, no hmmm, just watching shirts flying to the ceiling and lips pushing to grab something.
Michael Bay overdid many things, overkilled many it and it wasn’t an overall great watching. Rollingstone.com review summed “6 Underground” perfectly, “It’s like someone is repeatedly poking you in the parts of your brain that register mere sensation, and keeps hammering away until a line of drool drops from your downturned lip.”
“6 Underground”: How would you rate it?
Michael Bay started out as a director when he directed “Bad Boys” in 1995. Bay is that kind of director who is a big director, who has had his share of successes bit who the jury is out for, who doesn’t command a general belief that he is a great director, even when he hit the box office jackpot, critics still come for his jugulars. For instance, Michael Bay made “Armaggedon” in 1998 and hit more than half a billion dollars off a budget of 140 and critics hated him for this. Roger Ebert the movie review legend for one included this film in his list of most hated films and said this: ‘”The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained.”
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This is not me going to be led by the noose of legendary movie critics here. Why should I be when Michael Bay is the brain behind the “Transformer” and “Bad Boys” film series I love. There is enough to disagree with Michael Bay for but not enough to rob him of the benefit of the doubt. I don’t like this movie, “6 Underground” didn’t captive nor entertain me. There is not one of the characters whom I warmed to, none inspired me, and there is no poetry in the dialogues and no suspense whatsoever.
If and when “6 Underground” 2 comes out, I will watch it; with suspicion and apprehension, maybe, but I will watch it all right. This film may be bad but it is not the kind of bad that doesn’t deserve the sequel to be watched. I read someone that the producers of this movie are looking at eight sequels of this. Except there is a miraculous change of focus and details in the next film, except the next film makes for a great watching, they won’t get past three sequels. Or they will. This is the age of madness. I rate this movie 3/10. Plus one more point for being the first movie I know to be filmed in the Louvre, Abu Dhabi
Image source: HN Entertainment
