6 Underground Review

Michael Bay's "6 Underground" is a very loud and very dumb dilution of the James Bond formula, from shots of barely clothed beauties to large-scale stunt work and of course, ridiculous technology. Only it's all style and no wit, even lead Ryan Reynolds sticks with his usual cocky, coarse screen persona, as if he finds dropping the f-word a clever retort. But premiering on Netflix, the world of streaming has worked wonders for this otherwise rote retelling of every action movie cliche- it's free! Of course you have to have a Netflix subscription (or your old roommate's brother's password), but as something I checked by brain by the apartment door as soon as the film opens with a frantic, overlong and super violent chase scene, it works.

Mr. Reynolds plays One, a super-rich inventor of magnets who fakes his own death so he, and a motley crew of other one-dimensional characters who also made make-believe of their demise, can rid the world of bad people, without all the politics and red tape that come with legally eliminating bad people. Their first target is Rovach Alimov (Lior Raz), brutal dictator of Turgistan who just loves to gas the people in his country.

By the time we're properly hunting Rovach, our pack of good guys has grown to seven, each of course named after the number they joined the team. They never use their real names. They ignore everything about their lives once they "died," except for one- no not "One," as in Ryan Reynolds, but one of the seven people (this naming convention sucks), a guy named Three (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), who goes often to visit his mother in the nursing home. "She can't remember a thing," he promises One once he's caught, but what's the point? Am I supposed to feel bad that his mother has some ill-defined illness? If I was, it would have served something to the plot, which it doesn't. It only slows down the drowning action.

Take a relatively early scene when One encounters Rovach at the theater, drinking at the bar. They exchange quips and instead of killing him, One sleeps with the bartender! Oh how very Bond of you One, only you're not him.

That's how most of the runtime in "6 Underground" goes, nonsensical subplots distracting from preposterous fights, gunfire, car chases and explosions. Only with the trademark "Michael Bay" style, with delirious editing, super-quick cuts that make it almost impossible to know what's happening in relation of the action onscreen. OK good guys are there, and bad guys are there, but the camera wizzes all over the place and forces you to accept that the overwrought plot is merely a skimpy clothesline for absurd bloodshed and sex. Oh sure, there is some quick mentions of politics, but it's simply another article hanging out to dry.