Netflix’s 6 Underground is Chocobo Racing without the Final Fantasy
Just in case anybody was wondering: yes, Michael Bay directed this movie. [credit: Netflix ]
After a week of the preview blaring at me each time I opened the app, I finally watched Netflix's new film 6 Underground last night. With Ryan Reynolds starring and a couple of funny wisecracking moments in the trailer, it's easy to get your hopes up-but, for the most part, it's a mistake. I don't want to pan the movie too hard-I watched all two hours of it reasonably engrossed-but it's not going to be something I remember next year, and it probably won't be for anyone else, either.
Reynolds plays a disaffected tech billionaire who decides he's had enough of evil in the world. So he recruits a batch of misfits, each with a special talent, and takes on the bad guys-specifically, the fascist, dictatorial regime of semi-fictional country "Turgistan." The real Turgistan was a province of the Sasanian Empire, located in present-day Pakistan, and it quit being a thing in 651 AD. This bears little relation to 6 Underground's Turgistan, which is a thinly veiled pastiche of Syria and Abu Dhabi-complete with the chemical-weapon-deploying dictator of the former and the insane opulence of the latter. Reynolds and his motley gang are on a self-assigned mission to kill the amoral, evil dictator and replace him with his moral, good brother. Subtle.
6 Underground tries very hard to be at least four different movies and never quite lands any one of them. The first twenty minutes are one stupendous urban car chase-effectively, an homage to 1998's Ronin, but with lots more shiny stuff, CGI, and things that go boom. But where Ronin delivered jaw-droppingly satisfying technical driving, 6 Underground just fakes it with camera cuts, revving noises, and iffy jokes. Later, the film takes desultory, half-hearted stabs at being Ocean's Eleven, Deadpool, and Jarhead-but it can't land any of those, either.
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