Hello out there denizens of the internet, it is I, Slick Dungeon, here once again to tell you about a terrible movie I have watched so that you don’t have to.

I think out of all the filmmakers in existence right now, the one I would least regret suddenly disappearing forever, along with all their work, is Michael Bay. On the surface of things I should like his movies. They usually have big name stars, with decent acting credentials, are full of action, with an everything is on the line kind of plot. There are even exciting action sequences, big explosions, cool stunts and most of the things that you would want to see in a big action film. That’s on the surface of it. While watching 6 Underground it finally hit me. That’s all there is to a Michael Bay movie – surface. There is no depth here and all the cool shots, slick dialogue, lens flare shots and explosions will never, ever fix that.

6 Underground is about a group of 6 people who have faked their deaths so that they can be free to go and shape world events by killing off bad people even when governments don’t want that to happen for political reasons. This team of people is led by Ryan Reynolds who calls himself Number 1. Why does he want to fund this operation? Reasons, I guess? He is rich and he can, and one time he was doing a charity thing and there were some chemical attacks so he thought his best course of action was to fake his own death and find some people to make a special ops team to “take out the real bad guys”. I mean I guess that can be a plot but there is nothing more to this than that.

While watching this movie I noticed that the editing cuts are so fast that on almost every shot you can’t count past 2 before they cut to another shot. I found that super distracting. But not as distracting as just the whole movie itself. I am going to summarize below so, watch out for spoilers if you actually want to waste your time watching this thing.

The beginning of this thing shows Ryan Reynolds faking his own death in a plane crash, then being alive in a super crazy car chase in Italy. In the car chase, we meet the other characters who are basically just plot fodder at best. There’s a woman operating in the back of a car during a high speed chase. The woman being operated on is an assassin. There is some dude hopping over rooftops for, uh I guess to look cool? There’s the driver who is just freaking out during the whole chase but don’t worry, he doesn’t last long, and then there is a dude shooting at the rest of the people shooting at them. They all have respective numbers but good luck remembering which number is what.

The chase scene at the beginning is so bad. It’s basically the answer to the question, what if Michael Bay could do all his crazy actions stuff AND HAVE IT BE BLOODY? Sorry for the caps there but the movie basically screams at you anyway. Cars turn over and explode at the slightest brush. The men get all sweaty and the camera picks up the scenery with lens flares everywhere, except for when it takes time to ogle a woman so creepily you will feel dirty for just watching the movie.

The driver dies and Number 1 needs a new guy. But for no apparent reason Number 1 decides to replace him with a soldier not, you know, a driver. Then they go on this big mission to try to kill some dictator and install his democracy loving brother instead. I had a few questions about this whole movie.

• Ok sure these people are dead so they don’t exist on paper but when you like, destroy buildings, aren’t the authorities going to figure out who you were pretty quick?
• Why replace the driver with a soldier sharp shooter? That’s not even close to the same job description.
• While the whole thing with Ryan Reynolds holding an eye to unlock a phone was kind of funny, why the hell would he try to do that in a moving car?
• Ditto for things like, I dunno, SURGERY! I mean come on, I can suspend my disbelief pretty well but surgery in a chase that is going over 120 mph, I don’t freaking think so.
• Why should these guys get to decide who the “bad guys” are? I mean isn’t that why we have democratic systems of government. so that we can decide as a collective group who should be punished for what?
• Does Michael Bay have severe ADHD? Either way, he must have given it to his editor by now. Don’t be ashamed of it Michael, just trust that your audience can look at a thing for more than two actual seconds.
• When they get the new soldier guy to replace the driver guy they make him be number 7 instead of just calling him number 6. So first of all, this should have been called 7 underground but really only 1 actually underground instead.
• Now I know that there are other films out there that seriously objectify women but man, in these Michael Bay films, he is capable of making the camera linger in such a way that you feel dirty for just watching this. I think slasher films that really show nudity make me less uncomfortable than the way this dude lingers on a woman on a moped. Did he learn that in film school or what? Just leave the shot until it’s weird and then have a guy comment on how hot a woman is, Michael, you get an A+!
• Do we really need that many lens flares? You’re giving J.J. Abrams a run for his money on this.
• Why is everyone so sweaty all the time in your movies?
• Can Ryan Reynolds just please make more Deadpool now?
• The big reveal at the end is that Number 1 has a kid. Is that supposed to mean something to the audience at this point?
• The dictator that they overthrow has a huge army of well armed soldiers but they seriously cannot stop 6 people? 6?! I mean sure for a single mission objective, going in covertly to say rescue a hostage, I could see that working. But seriously these people destroy most of the country while they are there and not a single bad guy has good enough aim to kill one of them?
• Did we have to do that whole thing on the yacht? Oh wait, Michael Bay probably just wanted to get to hang out on a huge cool yacht.
• At one point, Number 1, who is an expert in magnets says that he turned a whole yacht into, “the world’s biggest magnet.” Hello? The world’s biggest magnet is the world itself with a liquid magnetic core. That yacht is big but it ain’t that big. Also, that’s not even how magnets work and the movie also seems to forget that if the thing were actually that strong the natural bits of iron and metal in our own bloodstream would make even the main characters who are using only plastic stick to it. Plus, he didn’t even check to see if his team had any metal like pacemakers or anything in them before switching it on. Pretty stupid.
• Why does Michael Bay continue to get paid to do this?
• Can he stop now?
• I’m going to have to watch more Transformer movies because of him, aren’t I?

That feels like a good place to stop. Since this is March and St. Patrick’s day is coming I am going to be reviewing the entire Leprechaun horror movie series on this blog. I’ll let you know which one is the worst one. (My bet is it will be a tie between Leprechaun 4: In Space and Leprechaun Back 2 tha Hood)

Distractedly yours,

Slick Dungeon