Title – 6 Underground (2019)

Director – Michael Bay (Transformers)

Cast – Ryan Reynolds, Mélanie Laurent, Dave Franco, Corey Hawkins, Adria Arjona, Ben Hardy, Sebastian Roché

Plot – Lead by their charismatic and mysterious leader One (Reynolds), a group of untraceable agents with various backgrounds and deleted past lives set about saving the world from a potentially dangerous threat.

“Here’s the fun part. From now on, you’re dead”

Review by Eddie on 17/12/2019

After more than 20 years in the industry and failing to show one ounce of restraint in his career, it’s fair to say we all know what to expect from a Michael Bay movie.

Staying true to form, Bay may now find himself away from the big screen and streaming directly into people’s living rooms across the world thanks to Netflix but that doesn’t mean that his loud, over the top, flaw ridden and daftly fun action thriller 6 Underground skimps on the Bayism’s in any way, shape or form.

The type of hyper, over-edited and insanely plotted film that gets critics cringing in their seats, Underground is as far away from “pure” cinema as you’d ever get but despite all his failings as a director, Bay should be commended for sticking to his guns and if there’s one thing Bay is capable of doing, its delivering a turn your brain off fun ride that is often full of set-pieces and show pieces that put many other action films to shame.

Kicking off with a seemingly never ending car chase through Florence, that is filled with an abundance of miracle car repairs and continuity errors but also some hold your breath action beats, Underground very quickly showcases to the viewer what they’re in for should they stick around and if the extended opening stanza is too much to bare, reach for that off remote as soon as you can, as what is to follow is very much of the same over the top and kinetic nature.

In many ways, Underground is one of the most straight up silly and unfiltered features to come out this year, there’s no message found lying underneath the surface, no statements being made and no adherence to common decency (just witness the amount of slow-mo deaths or bodies being flung around like no tomorrow); it feels almost as if Bay’s effort is from a time warp of body- filled 80’s and 90’s actioner’s that ensured they focused on spectacle first and then if they had time, to anything else in between.

Rounding up a decent cast that is headlined by Ryan “Deadpool persona” Reynolds as the mysterious billionaire One, Bay decides fairly early on that backstory, character motivations and plot sense will come second to everything else as One and a rag-tag group of partners in crime look to take justice into their own hands as they dispatch “bad guys” across the globe.

With this mantra in mind, Underground never lets up for a single second as we are whisked to and fro from Hong Kong kidnappings, unnecessary parkour vignettes, Las Vegas assassinations and misuses of magnets and should you be willing to get past the whole daftness of everything you are witnessing, get use to the 40 edits per minute and abundance of lens flair delights, Underground becomes the perfect type of film Netflix need’s to support around their increasingly high end dramatic efforts.

Final Say –

Losing none of his lunatic tendencies, the small screen release of 6 Underground has done nothing to stop Bay’s quest to blow up objects, shake his camera and deliver a brainless bouts of fun like only the best of them can. Far from high-class, 6 Underground is exactly what it promises to be should you be willing to go along for the ride.

3 swimming pools out of 5