The
Partially Educated Review
Netflix
have recently been proving that magic money trees really do exist by
giving some fairly big names the money to make a film that
other studios wouldn't bankroll. But they’re not exactly
appearing bothered about quality. For one funding of Scorsese,
there’s been about five for Adam Sandler. And when they give J.C.
Chandor money, they make sure to give more to Michael Bay.
6
Underground is the film that Bay has been threatening to make for
the last 25 years. Within 20 minutes of it starting, there’s enough
whooshing noises to make a Transformer jealous, the most
nonsensical explosions since the green ones in Van Damme’s Knock
Off, a nun flipping someone off and jokes about the dick size of
Michelangelo’s David (for reference, that joke turned 500 years old last decade). And through all of the carnage, if you listen really carefully, you can actually hear Bay
masturbating behind the camera.
In
fact, the only way Bay restrains himself here is by waiting 45
minutes before he unleashes an upskirt shot on a faceless actress.
I’d say its progress that he waited so long, but turns out his knee
must have been twitching because he then gives us two more in the
next five minutes.
The
titular six are all people who have been recruited by Ryan Reynolds' billionaire magnet genius (yep) to fake their deaths and renounce all identity, living only by a number. They then set about bringing justice to the
world in manners that endanger the lives of many, many, MANY
pedestrians. He may leave that last bit out of the pitch though.
The
number thing is a weird conundrum. On the one hand, it’s an
acknowledgement that the film’s characters are so lazily written
that you wouldn’t refer to them by anything other than the actor’s
names anyway. But it also means a line as innocuous as
“2, watch your back” sends your brain into a boundless land of confusion centred around the basic question
“Which one’s 2 again?”
Their
mission is to overthrow the dictator of Turgistan.
It’s yet another fictional country that’s dangerousness is
bolstered by this belief that putting ‘…stan’ on the end of the
name makes it sound all that more sinister. See London Has
Fallen’s ‘F**kheadistan’ for the ultimate example. From
there, Bay takes the thinnest plot he has ever been dealt (and let’s
not forget he’s directed five Transformers films) and
unleashes Bayhem on a level so unrelentingly nightmarish, you’ll
need a good night’s sleep just to be capable of basic human thought
again.
This
is a Ryan Reynolds film though. Surely there will be humour to get us
through? That all depends on your definition. If attempting to
be humorous counts, then yes. It’s like a speakeasy replaced all
the booze with loud, obnoxious frat-boy humour. There's a strange regularity in which genuinely talented screenwriters find themselves writing
for Bay and actively lower their game presumably knowing that all hope is lost. Rhett Reese
and Paul Wernick are the latest victims of this and whilst lowbrow is
their thing and they’re pretty good at it (Zombieland and
Deadpool are their most notable outputs), this is Clearance
Sale at the Brain Rot Department levels of witlessness. Buried
just became Reynolds’ second least funny film.
You
may have noticed that I’ve not really mentioned the other five team members a
whole lot. That’s because the film can't be arsed to develop properly, so why should I care? I’m almost
impressed that they got credited with their real names instead of
just ‘Not Ryan Reynolds’. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo gets the most material to work with and then proceeds to be the worst thing about it. Elsewhere, Mélanie
Laurent, Corey Hawkins, Adria Arjona and Ian Beale’s son are left
to pick up the scraps they’re afforded with Hawkins getting the one
dash of humanity that’s on offer.
Maybe
there is some solace in 6 Underground to be taken in this being peak-Bay. Maybe he's going to walk out at the next Cannes film
festival and acknowledge that there’s no way he can surpass the
stereotype he has made himself into, so his next project will be an
adaptation of The Bridges Of Madison County. Wait. No. Robopocalypse is listed as one of his upcoming
projects.
TWO
out of 10
