6 Underground

Year 13, Day 140 - 5/20/21 - Movie #3,845

BEFORE: Yuri Kolokolnikov carries over from "Tenet". I don't really know how something's going to follow "Tenet", I was blown away and probably nothing's going to even come close to it, it's probably going to be my favorite film of the year.  But I've got to try, got to keep going.  This film has a connection to tomorrow's film, which I'm also very excited about, for very different reasons.  So maybe today's film is just mortar between the bricks, I don't know.

I'm going to be traveling up to Massachusetts this weekend, it's my Dad's 80th birthday on Saturday.  I'll probably be busy all weekend, not only taking my parents out to dinner, if they're ready to go out to a restaurant, but also helping out with odd jobs around the house if I can.  My weekend films are on DVD, so I can bring them up with me, plus watch one film on Hulu on my phone, that shouldn't be a problem.  Maybe I'll bring a few extra movies up with me, there were some movies I wanted to show them on the last trip that we didn't get to.  But I've got my train tickets already, and I'll catch an Amtrak right after work tomorrow, then catch the Acela back on Monday morning and go straight to the office.

THE PLOT: Six individuals from all around the globe, each the very best at what they do, have been chosen not only for their skills, but for their desire to delete their pasts to change the future. 

AFTER: This was a rather good action movie, of course it's no "Tenet", because nothing else is, but there's a lot of wild, crazy plans that may not work, but DAMMIT, we've got to try, and it's basically a superhero film without powered people.  Each person on the team is an expert of some sort, whether that's the tech billionaire (Iron Man minus the armor) or the expert marksman (Hawkeye minus the arrows), the parkour guy (Spider-Man minus the webs) or the CIA agent (Black Widow minus the Scarlett Johansson).  You see the problem here, somebody wanted to make a superhero team movie, only they didn't have license to use any of the cool characters, so it's sort of grounded in reality, to make you think this all could actually happen.  Most likely, not, though.  Or maybe the whole thing's a loose knock-off of the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, that's just as likely in its unlikeliness.

For starters, these team members are all dead - not that they're walking-around zombies, they all had to fake their own deaths when they got recruited by One, who either faked his own death in a plane accident, or survived a plane accident and just rolled with it, because there are apparently advantages to living as a "ghost" - no relationships, no taxes, no e-mails to answer, no pets to feed, etc.  OK, so maybe it's not for everybody, but it seems to be working for this crew of six, putting their lives on the line every day to make the world safe for democracy in remote places.  And for some reason, this involves driving a car straight through the Uffizi Museum in Italy while escaping from a meeting with some Italian gangster who's been trying to influence the government, or something.  

After the extended wild, crazy car chase through Florence, and the recruitment of a new team member, it's on to the fictional republic of Turgistan, where One had an encounter years before with Rovach, the new dictator, and informed him that bad people always get punished, though it may take years to get back to him with a ragtag team of ghost experts willing to fake their own deaths, but surely, vengeance would follow in due course. And as flashbacks reveal each team member's prior history, we learn that Two was once responsible for capturing that same dictator's brother, Murat, and delivering him to Rovach.  But before they get to Turgistan, there's a side-trip to Las Vegas to extract information from the four generals, to find out where they've stashed Murat.  The team plans to move on to Hong Kong, while the four generals, umm, well let's just say they stay in Vegas, if you catch my meaning.

Murat, the dictator's brother, is kept in an all-glass penthouse on top of a skyscraper in Hong Kong, which seems a little weird and not very private at all.  It's also extremely nice accommodations for somebody being kept prisoner, but I guess that's a moot point.  Anyway, it's going to take a wild, crazy plan to extract him from his glass cage, involving a construction crane, laughing gas, bulletproof masks, and of course, very fast cars.  Of course, it's just crazy enough to work, provided nothing goes wrong - but some stuff does go wrong, and the team is forced to improvised, making an already wild, crazy plan even wilder and crazier.  

Finally, it's on to Turgistan, where the team has to infiltrate a state-run TV station before storming the dictator's yacht.  So of course the plan involves crazy tech, lots of shooting and a bit of parkour, because that's exactly the set of skills that this team collectively has.  What a coincidence!  But the team has been forever changed by the experience, they emerge as something of a loose family, willing to call each other by name instead of number, and some may even be willing to loosen the team rules against forming relationships.  What's the worst that could happen, after all?  When you've got nothing to lose and you figure you'll probably die on your next mission, you might as well go for it. 

Production-wise, this is the second most expensive movie ever produced by Netflix, the most expensive was "The Irishman", which didn't even visit as many foreign countries, blow up as many buildings or wreck as many cars.  Go figure.  But generally this one's more entertaining, and like I said about "The Hitman's Bodyguard", if they make a sequel to this I'll certainly be tuning in for it.

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Mélanie Laurent (last seen in "Enemy"), Corey Hawkins (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Adria Arjona (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Ben Hardy (last seen in "Mary Shelley"), Lior Raz (last seen in "Mary Magdalene"), Payman Maadi (last seen in "13 Hours"), Kim Kold (last seen in "Star Trek Beyond"), Dave Franco (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Tauras Cizas, Algirdas Dainavicius (last seen in "Defiance"), James Murray, Ron Funches (last heard in "The One and Only Ivan"), Lidia Franco, Lukhanyo Bele, George Kareman, Daniel Adegboyega (last seen in "Skyfall"), Constantine Gregory (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Roger Nevares, Pavel Kratky, Elena Rusconi, Russell Wilcox (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"). 

RATING: 7 out of 10 frightened pedestrians