Upgrade – 3 out of 5
I discovered this recent feature from writer/director Leigh Whannell (the man who gave us the horror movie Saw) exclusively through social media. There were sponsored ads for it and a lot of my buddies were checking it out but I was hesitant to watch it because everything about it felt generic to me. The title, the lead, the story—everything just felt like it was a feature that was pumped out for the sole reason of getting content out there for content sake. Also, the title—Upgrade—only had one “D” in it so I was guaranteed there wasn’t going to be a double dose of pimpin’ involved. Anyway, I checked out Upgrade and my initial thoughts proved to be correct.
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| This man has a gun in his hand...a literal handgun. I'm genuinely surprised that gun nuts haven't done this yet. |
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| In this future do we have a better health care system or did this accident doom him to a life of debt and looming bankruptcy? |
In the not too distant future (next Sunday A.D.), Grey Trace and his wife Asha are returning home from one of Asha’s clients—a tech developer who is currently creating a chip that can revolutionize the medical field—when their self-driving car goes wonky and causes them to crash. Some dangerous men pounce on the accident and proceed to murder Asha and leave Grey a quadriplegic. Consumed by grief over the loss of his wife and his disability, Grey is on the verge of suicide but finds himself visited by his late wife’s client. The man offers him a new chance at life thanks to his chip called STEM. The chip allows Grey to once again walk and move but also has an artificial intelligence (voiced by Simon Maiden) that agrees to help Grey find revenge and even, occasionally, take control of his body so that it can accomplish some of the deeds Grey doesn’t have the stomach for. However, while on his quest for answers and vengeance, Grey soon learns that this gift he has been given may not be all that it seems…
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| His version of the "Smooth Criminal" video is pretty awesome! |
Whannell is actually doing some cool stuff with Upgrade and, on the surface, has the potential to be a really cool film. It’s a cyberpunk action feature with some edge to it and, on the plus side, it is cyberpunk without coming off goofy like these features did in the 90s—we have the special effects now to make them look legit! The only thing that really holds it back is the lead, a story that doesn’t flow very well and an ending that kinda reeks of self-importance.
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| In the future, The Cloud is literally a cloud. |
I don’t want to completely knock the story because it definitely has some cool ideas within it and there’s no doubt it had the potential to be a decently entertaining action/revenge flick. Sadly, the film has a lot of moments that dragged and they were often in between very strange tonal shifts in the narrative. Basically, the film felt like it would go from a dragging scene that slowly unfolded the narrative plot points to a graphically violent fight scene that was complete with very awkwardly place moments of levity. This made for a feature that was hard to get invested into as it felt like it was constantly speeding up only to slam on the brakes and slow down to a crawl. Matters were only made worse when the ending arrived. There is a twist to it and it was decent in theory but was also harmed by the overall pompous feeling of it. The ending that arrived and the twist that is revealed never truly felt shocking to me but rather felt like it thought it was shocking. It wasn’t telegraphed in a way where it provided an impact and then walked away with the confidence of an ending that thought it did. There was almost an annoying smugness to it.
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| The ending involved him...um...just fill in whatever movie spoiler you want in order to complete this caption. |
Finally, Logan Marshall-Green wasn’t a very strong lead. His performance is passable but he just didn’t have a commanding screen presence that compelled me to be interested in his character. There was something that was just incredibly bland about his performance that made him pretty forgettable in this role. Maybe it is the fact that white men as the protagonist in action roles are a dime a dozen in the entertainment world and his presence literally brought nothing new nor did his performance do anything to really command attention but I found him to be so vanilla in his role of Grey Trace that it really harmed the overall entertainment factor for the movie.
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| Upgrade starring generic white dude with a beard. |
Upgrade isn’t a bad idea and it actually had some cool things working in its favor. I liked the realistic approach it took to the future elements—it never went too crazy and stayed in the realm of possibility—and the feature has some very cool action sequences. Sadly, a lot of the action sequences came off a tad on the comical side accidentally as the STEM took over Grey’s body but only had some much control—for example, STEM literally uses Grey’s hand to move Grey’s head out of the way and while this is sound logic with how STEM is connected to the host it was kinda hard not to laugh at it because it looked damn silly. The big thing that really killed it for me and made this a sorta average, slightly forgettable experience is the lead isn’t that commanding and the story has a tendency to drag.
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