Why 6 Underground Sucks

G'evening you pack of mongrels. Normally I'm all about the positivity, about the fantasy genre, about the books... well tonight, I'm going to bizarro land, because there's a movie that sucks and I need a cathartic experience. Maybe I should be denied that because I'm stupid and ignored the fact that the director is Michael Bay, but tough. Besides, Bay's had some good movies, right? Maybe he was due another. But this isn't it.

I knew within about ten minutes it was going to suck. The reason I knew this was the combination of

a) Dramatic voiceover start that's trying to claim some sort of sense of more than a dumb fun action flick
b) Instant shift to fast moving action scene with no sense of why it matters, poor character establishment and nothing other than sheer visceral thrills (dampened by the fact nothing major narratively will happen this early) - just a dumb action flick.

Never trust a story that doesn't know what it wants to be.

I should have switched it off then but my wife said she was invested (despite it clearly being terrible) and I was curious to see how far down the rabbit hole we went.

The plot of 6 Underground, should anyone care, is that a heartless tech billionaire becomes narked by a nefarious dictator in Central Asia and decides to fake his death, then hire a crack team of mercenaries willing to do the same to take him down. The idea flirts with intelligence but every time it looks like it's getting somewhere it trots out a crass cheesy chat-up line that sends intelligent quick-walking from the bar with a fixed smile. The fictional Central Asian country is called Turgistan. I only hope someone named it that because they had a bet on how many reviews would make a joke about the movie being called turgid, because elsewise there is zero sense of self-knowledge present.

I could slam the gleefully low IQ level of this film all night but, to be fair, it would be somewhat besides the point. Action movies, by and large, are not trying to be intelligent. They're trying to be entertaining. Judging them otherwise makes you about as low IQ as the film. However, when they try to be intelligent and fail, the film deserves everything it gets. Giving the audience a headache trying to understand why the hell something is happening is not entertainment. 6 Underground does that on two counts, both with it's bad attempt to be as sophisticated as Sicaro and with the non-linear hidden nature of the plot. This isn't Inception and it's a worse movie for trying to be.

Which is unfortunate as honestly, the action/wise-cracking part of the movie feels pretty tame. There's some decent parkour scenes and the firefights aren't actively bad, but that's it. Any hand to hand fights are forgettable. Tense infiltrations feel mundane. There's none of the building sense of momentum and excitement you get from watching a pair of gunmen advancing implacably in tandem with each other the way Heat or, well, just about any well executed movie or show manages.

There is one golden moment where the billionaire, played by Ryan Reynolds, tries to use some Eminem to motivate their would be new ruler. It's perfectly timed and phrased and for one golden moment, you see what could have been. Most of the comedy either doesn't really hit the mark or actively feels cringey. One must at that juncture point out how Reynolds seems happy to be typecast as foul-mouthed morally shady yet heroic type. Well, good for him. I too would be happy with this life. But if the leading exponent of that art can't find a better vehicle for this talents than this, a movie that often would make perfect sense with Michael Scott as the main character, what the hell is going on?

In fact, what the hell is going on would be my tagline for this movie full stop. And not in the good way. It's not clear about what it wants to be, it's not good at any of the things it could be, and it just downright sucks.