SEOUL, South Korea –  If you’re Michael Bay and Netflix has your back, you’ll surely be inspired to take your jaw-dropping, heart-stopping stunts, and spectacular action to the next level.

Bay’s new movie, 6 Underground, is his first with Netflix. It began streaming on Friday, December 13.

“Netflix gives you a lot of freedom. Netflix is a great company for us to work, for filmmakers, because they let you run with the movie and they have money, right? They had enough money to make the movie and so Mike and I both felt like the future is here on Netflix and streaming services. We wanted to be a part of that and to make this movie at Netflix,” producer Ian Bryce said on the green carpet world premier of 6 Underground.

Bryce has teamed up with Bay on the Transformers series and 6 other movies, and has under his belt several other blockbuster films like Speed, Twister, Saving Private Ryan, and the impeccable Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot.

And so, Bay and Bryce made everything in 6 Underground huge – from the twice as much Bayhem, the assemblage of a global and diverse talented cast, and the most breathtaking filming locations. They went from Italy to Abu Dhabi, to Budapest to Hong Kong. Let’s include the Kismet superyacht, too, because it’s a location in itself for all this grandeur.

As always, Bay’s action sequences leave you breathless with his love for speed, fast cuts, and attention to details that so many things are happening before your eyes. 

Neon green Alpha Romeo

You haven’t warmed your seat yet when Bay treats you to a 15-minute high speed car chase in the narrow streets of Florence. There’s mayhem right away, ie, flying cars and people, explosions, blood splatters all over – amid exchanges of witty dialogue.  

Ryan Reynolds, Mélanie Laurent, and Adria Arjona, with Dave Franco behind the wheel, are flying in a neon green Alfa Romeo Guilia Quadrofoglio as they try to evade thugs raining bullets on them. Ben Hardy waits for them on top of the Duomo while Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is in a vehicle ready to pounce the pursuers with his own bullets.

Then the chase abruptly ends, tragically for our team, thus giving you a moment to catch your breath and yes, feel sad.

This is how you are introduced to each member of the vigilante group that Reynolds, as One, the disillusioned billionaire-inventor, organized. Their mission is to oust an authoritarian leader who has looted his country and starved his people.

Laurent is Two, a former CIA agent; Garcia-Rulfo is Three, the hitman; Hardy is Four, the skywalker; Arjona is Five, the doctor; Franco is Six, the skilled driver; and Corey Hawkins is Seven, the soldier. All their characters have faked their deaths, erased their past, and have no names except numbers  to maintain their anonymity after they are resurrected. They all seek redemption from their troubled past.

Not so dead people

They move like ghosts that want to scare the hell out of the dictator, played by the outstanding Israeli actor Lior Raz of the fictional country Turgistan, and drag him out of power, quite literally.

Part of the team’s mission is to rescue the dictator’s democracy-loving brother who’s kept under tight watch in a posh Hong Kong high rise with a roof top pool around which some amazing stunts revolve.

Writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, who worked with Ryan Reynolds in the Deadpool movies, pitched the idea of having “ghosts” who staged their deaths bring bad guys to justice.

It’s an interesting premise, especially when Raz’s character tries to hunt down those haunting him only to be told that these people are listed as dead. There are loose ends in the story, though, that failed to make the story airtight and have you asking some why’s and how’s.

How the dictator’s brother, along with the vigilante squad, restores democracy and leads the people’s uprising also feels a little contrived. It happens, too, all the while that the magnets One invented cause a symphony of blood and gore on the Kismet.

You can’t help but wonder, too, if 6 Underground is a political commentary. Bryce, however, told the media at the premier: “That’s not what drives the movie. What drives the movie is the entertainment value and making something for the fans.”

Impactful scenes

For all the stupendous action sequences that 6 Underground offers, the scenes that Michael Bay created that leave a lingering, sickening feeling are the ones without any weapons, explosives, or flying kicks.

When the second in line generals are forcibly pushed off a high rise building because the dictator does not trust them, Bay shows bodies flailing like they’re falling from the sky. It’s impactful simply for its mix of fear and heartlessness.

For all his arrogance, the dictator does not want to be face-to-face with the people he oppressed. When he’s thrown into the hands of the angry mob, his terrified scream echoes in your head.

Michael Bay haunts us with that. – Rappler.com