Film Review: 6 Underground
6 Underground starts out feeling like Netflix gave Michael Bay $150 million to create the wildest two-hour action set-piece his heart desired. It ends feeling like Bay realized his action scenes were terrible and tried to make the audience care about the characters beyond vessels to compensate. Whatever it was, Bay failed to create a good action movie. 6 Underground instead plays like Bay created the wildest, least connected action scenes he wanted and strung them together with spit and tape. This is a rare film that is made worse by attempts to make me care about the characters.
The entire conceit of our special ops team heroes is that no one knows who they are. It’s preferable to keep it that way. Outside of the Delta Force sniper introduced after the initial action sequence, we don’t need to know these people. Viewers don’t come to Michael Bay movies looking for touching character arcs. They come looking for insane action scenes and ideas.
The film’s main problem is Bay can’t even execute functional action set pieces here. 6 Underground is so determined to keep the audience’s attention that it very quickly forgets to have good action. The action is loud and frantic but poorly edited. The cuts are unmotivated, unnecessary and frequently lose track of the action in favor of MORE EXPLOSIONS. The film also uses its most exciting idea at the beginning, leading to the rest feeling like a complete slog.
6 Underground is also dragged down by attempts to make the characters anything more than vessels through which the action occurs. Ryan Reynolds is One, the billionaire putting the team together. Melanie Laurent is Two, the CIA spook. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is Three, a hitman. Ben Hardy is Four, a dude who’s good at parkour. Adria Arjona is Five, the team’s medic. Dave Franco is Six, the criminally underused driver who is killed off in the first 10 minutes. Corey Hawkins is Seven, the aforementioned Delta Force sniper. We don’t need to know more.
These attempts to make the characters two-dimensional are dragged down by the inherent silliness of the whole affair. This film unironically uses music from a meme. And we’re supposed to feel for these characters! This also leads to the question of why these actors took these roles. Not only are their talents better served elsewhere, but they also aren’t even needed. Bay could’ve thrown six nobodies with no acting skill in the starring roles and the film would’ve been just as well.
This is just a bad movie, even by Michael Bay standards. The man is talented at what he does. Everything here, though, feels like a waste. It’s a waste of Ryan Reynolds and Corey Hawkins, it’s a waste of $150 million and watching it is a waste of your time.
Final score: 2.7/10
