6 Underground (2019)

Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Ryan Reynolds, Mélanie Laurent, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Corey Hawkins, Ben Hardy, Adria Arjona, Lior Raz, Payman Maadi, Dave Franco, Elena Rosconi. [R]

Headache-inducing series of flashy, hyperactive action scenes in search of a compelling plot to reasonably tie them together (and a purpose to exist in the first place). Reynolds is a billionaire who decides to disappear off the grid and assemble a squad of fellow ghosts with special talents to take down unimaginatively evil dictator Raz. The team is a collective of snide ciphers with flashback “origin stories” that provide neither depth nor personality—they bicker, gripe, crack wise, shoot, run, drive, look good doing it, and that’s about it. Opens with a visually chaotic car chase that has no sense of place, orientation or rhythm, and lasts way too long…yet still emerges as arguably the highlight of the movie (that, or the use of magnets during the climax). Like most Bay flicks, it’s full of individual shots that would look great in coffee table books or wall calendars, but when it comes to basic techniques of motion, momentum, escalation and spatial relationship, utterly hopeless (plus, the editing is spastically choppy enough to make a Michelin star chef jealous). If there’s a reference to the Sneaker Pimps, it got lost underneath all the explosions.

28/100