Went to see the new sci-fi/cyberpunk/revenge flick Upgrade last night. This is a movie that got some buzz out of SXSW but I only caught one trailer for it months ago, long enough that I’d forgotten everything. Which was great because this movie took me by surprise.
It’s a pretty generic, oft-told story. A husband and wife are caught by some thugs… she’s killed and he’s wounded. And now he wants revenge. The only problem is, he took a bullet to the back and is now a quadriplegic until a rich software engineer promises he can walk again through an implant. And he does, and he can, and the implant turns out to be a self-aware machine who can help him do kung fu. So the rest of the movie is a revenge flick mixed with some RoboCop, 2001, a little Matrix, and a little something else.
Very little of this is original and a lot of its predictable but it doesn’t matter because the movie is just cool, funny, exciting, thrilling, and horrifying. It crackles with good, fun energy when it needs to and slows down when appropriate. I was surprised by how much time they spent on this man’s plight as a quadriplegic. A broken man who needs his mother to bathe him and futuristic appliances to feed him. It was well done and well acted… and just enough and long enough to set up some bloody cyborg revenge fantasy.
Beyond the idea of a broken man walking again and having a robot voice in his head, the shtick of the movie is that the computer can take over his body when given permission so it can fight for him. This leads to some cool acting as the hero is visibly amazed, confused, and horrified as the robot uses his body to dismantle the bad guys. Imagine the actor pretending one thing in his face while doing some remarkably economical fighting with his body. The stunt choreography found the most economical form of combat… no extra flourishes or moves. Just enough to take down the enemy, as if a robot were running his body (as is the case). Not only does it look cool but the camera work is energetic as it moves, rotates, and finds other interesting tricky shots.
Some of the film is hilarious too. The movie has a hidden dark sense of humor as we see the bad guys, one by one, taken down by this machine of a man. And it’s satisfying in a dark-of-your-soul way since sometimes the bad guys are taken down with, let’s say, a little too much aggression. This film was made by a director of some of the Saw films so you can image, with an appropriate R rating, how bloody it gets.
Because, yeah, this is just a pulp fiction genre film set in a cyperbunk sci-fi universe. It has a few ideas in its head and it treats it’s main character’s early injuries seriously, but it’s still a pulpy genre picture that mainly just seeks to entertain.
And I was entertained. Greatly. This is a fun, exciting little movie and I’d love it to get a sequel. I’m not sure I’d recommend it to everyone; you know if you want to see a movie like this and you should. A good, unexpected time at the movies.
Score: 87