6 UNDERGROUND REVIEW
Starring: Ryan Reynolds
Directed By: Michael Bay (Armageddon, The Rock, Transformers)
Rated: R
Runtime: 2 hours 7 minutes
The appeal of a Michael Bay movie is simple.Stuff blows up on screen.The hero saves the day.Very simplistic.You can look through the entirety of Bay’s nearly 25 year career and it’s very hit and miss.You’ve got good movies like Bad Boys, Armageddon, and The Rock.And you also have bad movies like Pearl Harbor, The Island, and any Transformer sequel, take your pick.No viewer is indifferent to Michael Bay movies.You generally love the movie or you hate it every time out.6 Underground is advertised as “The Most Michael Bay Movie Ever”.
6 Underground tells the story of a group of people who have chosen to fake their own deaths in order to rid the world of its most evil inhabitants.Ryan Reynolds stars a cocky, smart mouthed, financier.So…he plays the same character he always does.Which is fine, we like him in that role.You just know what you’re getting at this point.
In typical Michael Bay fashion, 6 Underground has a loud and chaotic opening sequence designed to set the tone for the next two hours. I just found 6 Underground to be incredibly boring after the first scene.It jumps around far too often when a linear story might have worked better.It rebounds and the final 30 minutes or so are really solid, but there’s too much of a lull in between.
I made a list of all the changes I’d make to 6 Underground to make the movie better, and then I read it back to myself and was astounded that every change I would have made would have brought this closer to being a Deadpool sequel.The comic relief is good…more of that.The over the top violence is fun…more of that.Ryan Reynolds yelling at his teammates works…more of that.It’s all just a Deadpool movie. But make no mistake, 6 Underground is no Deadpool movie.
There are exotic locales to kill foreign dignitaries.The action is exciting.But what little story there is in this film, is a paint-by-numbers plot.Not the worst thing in the world, I just didn’t care about any of the characters or the outcome.
6 Underground is streaming exclusively on Netflix and it works rather well for that kind of platform.You can fold the laundry while watching and not be lost.You can play on your phone during it and not miss much.It works for what it is, but it’s nowhere near as good as it could have been.
On a scale of “See It/Stream It/Skip It” – Skip It – The over-the-top violence is fun, and Reynolds is an always an appealing star, but you can find both of those aspects in other/better movies
If you liked Deadpool, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, or Mission: Impossible you might enjoy 6 Underground.
2 out of 5 stars for 6 Underground – “The Most Michael Bay Movie Ever” is more of a warning than a selling point.