6 Underground (Netflix)

[Greg]

No, The Queen is in town and we watched this anyway. She was probably tired from driving in the car all day coupled with her laryngitis.

It's Beyhem, I tell you, Beyhem. 

Netflix backed up the money truck and Michael Bey made them an action adventure film starring Ryan Reynolds.

The first twenty minute car chase through Florence was awesome. Awesome. It seemed to go on forever, maybe too forever. My main thoughts were how did they get the permits to film there? They shot in the square in front of the Duomo. They shot (maybe) in the Uffizzi. They shot in front of the Uffizzi. It showed off Florence very well what with all the cars exploding and people dying. They did a lot of things in the car chase I had never seen before. Lots of Ultravi.

Should have turned it off after the car chase because they seemed to have used up all their creative energy for that.

The rest of it was kind of a muddled mess. The 6 Underground group needs to overthrow a dictator and his four generals in order to place the dictators brother in charge of the country. Which I'm sure will make everything in the country of Turgistan better. That's the way the world works.

Reynolds tones down the quip machine which is always good so he's not annoying. He's the only recognizable actor in the flick. The rest are just generic characters. Bey shoots a lot of parkour stunts mainly for the sake of showing parkour stunts. The set pieces in the rest of the film are entertaining but none live up to the car chase. The battle on the boat is amusing but it made no sense.

If you have Netflix, watch it for the car chase.

[Drunk Monk]

Watched the car chase.  Agreed.  Awesome.  Especially for someone who climbed that Duomo in his 50s, not just as a strapping teen.  

So I should stop now?  I don't care for Ryan.  I know he's one of your MCU boycrushes Greg, but he's never been my cup of tea.  And in those first 20 mins, he seemed as Ryan as ever.  Plus he's narrating it.  But that was some damn good car chase.  Bay always does action well, absurd but well.  

That parkour looked fake tho.

[Greg]

Ryan is more MCU adjacent at this point. How will Deadpool work at Disney is the big question. I've grown to like him because of Deadpool. But I don't like when the smarmy comes on strong which isn't the case in 6 Underground. Not like it was in F&F: Calvin and Hobbes.

I don't know if you should continue. Nothing lives up to the car chase. Maybe the boat stuff at the end. But the car chase....

No one can slide down the Duomo. Unless they end up as a puddle at the bottom. The only parkour I have liked in a movie is the beginning of Casino Royale.

I climbed it my twenties, Creaky.

[Drunk Monk]

I got about halfway through and I'm going to give up for now.  Not because I wasn't entertained.  More because my pirate connect kept crashing.  Actually, I wasn't overly entertained.  But I will say that Bay is cinematic.  He's got a great eye and many of the shots are soaringly panoramic.  But yeah, pretty vacuous stuff.  Tell me you weren't expecting something more.  

There was a fleeting moment where I thought 'man, if you just replaced all the Bayxplosions and such with artsy scenes of people discussing existentialism in French cafes and incongruent shots of random statues from oblique angles, this would be like a art film.'  It was fleeting though and remember I'm still kinda sick.

The Duomo slide was dumb.  The whole car chase was dumb when your really got thinking about it.  But such are Bay films.  It's a little refreshing to see him do something more R as in ruthless and a lot more swearing.  

I may go back for the rest.  Boat chase, you say?  That sounds dumb.  Deliciously dumb.

[Greg]

It's dumb.

All that talk about brotherhood and family and we don't leave our own behind made my brain hurt.

[Drunk Monk]

Sounds like Bay wanted to make his spin on Fast & Furious.  

Fortunately the Brotherhood of DOOM doesn't suffer from such attachments.  We're happy to leave each other behind if it increases our chances to save our own skins.  Heck, we'll push each other behind just for giggles.

[Drunk Monk]

Well okay now, that wasn't that bad.  It wasn't that good but it was very visual.  The action was enjoyable.  Usually I get all excited about long continuous single shots and minimal cgi but this was the complete opposite.  I don't think there was a shot that clocked in at over a minute.  Most were less than half a minute.  And the cgi was all over the place - bullets flying, blood splatter flying, bodies flying, some really good flying cgi stuff.  It was bombastic with an emphasis on the bomb, tempted to say Bay on steroids.  So painfully dumb that I had to force myself to stop trying to think about what was happening and just enjoy it for its ultravi.  So yes, I agree with Greg's initial appraisal - it's a muddled mess, but a hot mess, and sometimes messy isn't bad, just dumb.  I can't completely endorse it because there was no swordfight.  And oh man, I so wish nitrous really worked like that.  That would be so fun.  And I had to give up nitrous because it already was too much fun.  But not fun like that.  That's what all the cartoons promised me but that's not what it's really like.  DOOM recommended but not the thinking DOOM, the dumb drunk DOOM.

[Drunk Monk]

Now this is entertainment.

eat those words greg.

EAT THEM!!!