‘6 Underground’ Was Almost Perfect
The one thing I didn’t like about Netflix’s mind-numbingly ultraviolent action movie
The moment Netflix’s $150 million dollar action movie 6 Underground lost me was near the end when the evil dictator of a fake Central Asian country is rushed to a bunker on a luxury mega-yacht, a super-team of beautiful vigilantes led by Ryan Reynolds in hot pursuit.
Up until that point, I had absolutely no problem with a movie designed by data-scientists to stimulate the lizard parts of my brain that will watch a YouTube video of a dude skateboarding off a roof and into a pool and then think “cool, I could do that.”
From the opening 20-minute care chase that destroys twenty cars, four mopeds, two motorcycles, and a truck I was in. I lost count of the bad guys who went splat! during that sequence. At one point, a grenade breaks a guy’s nose before exploding with the force of twelve grenades.
It didn’t even bother me that a small army of bad guys could shoot 10,000 bullets at one of the 6 Underground and every one of them misses.
I didn’t laugh at Spider-Man parkour dude or cartoonishly sexy spy lady or the outlandish kidnapping scene that required ‘laughing gas,” which makes a building full of people laugh hysterically. I totally, and completely accepted the concept: a tech billionaire, played by Reynolds, fakes his death in order to assemble a crew of similar permanently off-the-grid ‘ghosts’ dedicated to spreading democracy. You see, the government can’t do one what a billionaire and five drop-dead-gorgeous men and women with unique killing skills can do. The movie could have been called Ayn Rand’s Dirty Half-Dozen.
No. Apparently my suspension of disbelief collapses when a villain does something too idiotic, even for a movie villain. And for me, the idea of a bunker on a boat was a red line. The moment the evil dictator’s dopey henchmen were like “we’ve got to get you to the yacht’ I just slowly shook my head ‘no.’
Now, I don’t want you to think I don’t do my research. Reader, I do the bare minimum of research. Apparently, rich people do have panic rooms on their fancy floating penthouses because pirates are real and yachts must look like giant pinatas full of money on the ocean’s horizon. But if you’re an evil dictator, the kind whose only motivation is ‘being evil,’ the sort of bad dude who murders some of his cronies just so his other cronies don’t get too comfortable, I’d like to think you have a more solid Plan B than escaping to a getaway yacht.
I get that the yacht looked cool. The shootout on the yacht was pretty bananas. In fact, at one point, Ryan Reynold’s character, who you’ll remember is a tech billionaire AND genius is able to turn the yacht into a giant magnet, which means bad guys with bullet-proof vests and their guns go flying every which way. Does that make any sense? It’s his main contribution to the plan: his fortune has something to do with magnets and so he has a gizmo that can turn…oh, fuck it…
Here’s the thing: I was fine with that magnet nonsense. But it’s amazing how a single scene can almost ruin a movie, like a brick being pulled out of my imagination’s Jenga tower. I hope 6 Underground 2 features a villain with a proper lair — maybe a fortress atop a snowy mountain?
Anyway, the yacht ends up sinking. Which is something I knew would happen? If you’re an evil dictator don’t run to your yacht, especially if Ryan Reynolds and his sexy commandos are trying to pull off an extrajudicial political assassination.
But other than that minor plot point, I thought 6 Underground was almost perfect. For what it is. The action is inspired, the dialogue is as simple and well-worn as a pair of sweatpants, the actors happy to be there. The whole thing goes down smooth like a meatball sub liquified in a blender.
6 Underground is the guns-blaring, car-crashing, bone-crunching solution to a simple programming equation. Netflix’s data clearly shows that viewers love Ryan Reynolds, a box-office star who is enjoying an improbable leading man comeback — his R-rated mega-hit Deadpool movies have all but erased his star turn as a CGI space cop in the superhero flop Green Lantern. Ryan Reynolds is the perfect modern movie man: cocky, snarky, forgettable. Whenever I see him in a movie I feel like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him and, you know, he’s alright. A little creepy, but harmless.
The rest of the cast is highly watchable, including sensitive mamas boy-slash-killing machine Manuel Garcia Rulfo, and Melanie Laurent and Adria Arjona, playing those ancient archetypes ‘supermodels with superstrength.’
The data also must support an audience for violence and 6 Underground delivers. The mayhem is both gratuitous and elegant. If you’ve ever wanted to watch a bullet fly, slow-motion, through the head of a cigar and out the back of the head of the man smoking it, then you’re in luck. Let me be clear: if you want to see Ryan Reynolds try to unlock a phone’s retina scanner by dangling it’s owner’s eyeball over the screen by the nerve endings, then stream this movie immediately. The death toll is somewhere in the middle of ‘too many’ and ‘the population of a small city.’
Netflix’s algorithms also know it’s users are into soft-core sex, racial and gender diversity (but not too much), and cosmic rock band Muse. There are three Muse songs in 6 Underground, and one of those songs is played twice.
Finally, Netflix must know that there are Michael Bay fans out there. One of his best movies, The Long Kiss Goodnight starring an ass-kicking Geena Davis, is currently on Netflix. 6 Underground is pure, uncut Michael Bay.
Once upon a time, he was the master of slickly-produced, physics-be-damned shoot-'em-up He-Man operas like The Rock, Armageddon, and Bad Boys, each a classic in their own ways. And it’s not like Bay hasn’t tried to expand his horizons: 2013’s bodybuilder crime drama Pain and Gain was his attempt at directing a Coen Brothers movie.
Michael Bay likes guns and cars and, especially, explosions and God bless him for that. It’s a legitimate aesthetic. America celebrates its birthday by trying to blow up the nighttime sky.
But all that seems forgotten because he spent ten years making four Transformers movies, which are movies based on popular 80s toys but in the hands of Bay, are nightmarish heavy metal tone poems about the death of the Industrial Age.
I remember going to one of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, they all blend together to me. It could have been Transformers: Dark of the Moon or Transformers: Age Of Extinction. Anyway, during the climax of that movie, and in case you need reminding Bay’s Transformer movies are 50% climax, I fell asleep while giant snake robots destroyed skyscrapers. Like, I nodded off and took a legitimate nap. When I opened my eyes giant snake robots were still destroying skyscrapers. I like to think, right now as I type this, those giant snake robots are still destroying skyscrapers.
I suppose, at some point, I should write 5,000 words about those love letters to having way too much money.
His movies may not be the politically-correct favorite of movie theaters right now but streaming services live to serve niches, even gigantic niches like boys and men and boy-men. You know, the patriarchy demo. 6 Underground was built, like a Frankenstein’s monster, by Netflix’s robots to appeal to men, specifically middle-aged men who fantasize about joining the Navy SEALS without having to exercise.
But I don’t want to suggest that only men like movies with the following fairy tale moral: violence fixes everything despite the entire history of human suffering.
I know plenty of women who love speed, fire, and [the sound of a missile flying at a helicopter.] I, for one, love romantic-comedies. People are complex! Gender norms are just suggestions! Have you seen Always Be My Maybe with Ali Wong and Randall Park? That is a hilarious, heartwarming flick. I have watched it three times: Keanu Reeves cameo kills me, as does Park’s character’s weird-ass garage band songs.
In a way, action movies are like romantic comedies only instead of longing glances across the dance floor there are furrowed brows, ready for carnage. Action movies should have more gentle kisses in the snow and more romantic-comedies should have scenes where the ugly duckling who finds loves presses a detonator and blows up a villain’s fortress atop a snowy mountain.