WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Ryan Reynolds stars as a billionaire code-named One, who forms a team of vigilantes that fake their deaths in order to go deep undercover as "ghosts." Their first serious mission: targeting the corrupt ruler of the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Turgistan. Lots of explosions ensue, in the typical Michael Bay fashion.
MY SAY: "6 Underground" finds Bay in vintage filmmaking form, overdirecting every minute of the movie to the point where it's nearly incomprehensible. That's certainly his characteristic style, so it's hard to be surprised by encountering it here, but Bay's first movie for Netflix utterly lacks the fun characterizations and genuinely humorous moments that set apart his best work, such as "The Rock." Everyone involved in this movie _ from the director to Reynolds and the rest of the cast _ is on total autopilot.
The film begins with a car chase through the streets of Florence that is cut into smithereens, without any of the establishing perspective necessary to create a suspenseful cinematic sequence. There are endless, disorienting low-angle close-ups of Reynolds and his co-stars (including Dave Franco and the great actress Melanie Laurent, who had better have gotten a big paycheck for this) and lots of weirdly comic slow-motion digressions to fully establish the fundamental truth that none of this matters in the slightest.
