Upgrade is the offspring of a lot of other movies. It’s primarily a cross between Death Wish and Robocop, but there are elements (either in terms of plot or aesthetics) of Blade Runner, 2001 and Ex Machina. With those kinds of influences, its also a movie that I wanted to like more than I ultimately did. It does individual odes to all of those films quite well, but it feels like it can never really decide what it wants to be. At times its trying to be a serious and somber science fiction film, and at other times it wants to be a throwback to sleazy revenge flicks and that indecisiveness means that it ultimately doesn’t completely do either.
The film is set in a near future where society revolves around automation and rapidly emerging artificial intelligence technology. A guy named Grey and his wife Asha are attacked by a street gang, leaving her dead and him a quadriplegic. Seeing that the police aren’t doing much about it, Grey agrees to have an experimental computer chip implanted in him that will eliminate his paralysis so that he can go after the guys that killed his wife. He also discovers that the computer chip (called Stem) is self-aware and can give him super ass-kicking kung fu powers and also talks to him, and this comes in handy when killing the shit out of street thugs.
This movie does a number of things very well. Logan Marshall-Green (who is fairly unknown, but he was in Prometheus and was also that bullshit version of Shocker in Spiderman: Homecoming) is excellent in the lead role. He shows a great emotional range, especially following the murder of his wife, and adds nice robotic touches to his performance when he is being controlled by the computer. It’s a difficult role to play since the character is largely not in control of his own functions for much of the film, and that could easily have become either too comedic or just downright awful. This performance is nuanced and comedic at times without ever feeling inappropriately jokey. Pretty much all of the performances are solid, actually, even though the cast is pretty much all unknowns. The villains are threatening and quirky enough to be interesting, even if they do feel a bit derivative of the replicants in Blade Runner.
The film also does a great job of world building, especially given its financial limitations. Although the exact budget is unknown, it is described as a “micro-budget” movie and that usually means the $3-5 million range these days. All of the technology in the film feels like something that would organically develop from the present day and the world itself looks pretty damn believable. There were a few moments of obvious green-screen work, but this looks far better than a lot of big-budget movies that I see. Just goes to show that money can’t buy creativity (unless you hire a creative person…..fuck off, you know what I mean). The movie also doesn’t skimp on the violence. Going into the movie, I wasn’t sure if it was rated R or PG-13 and I found out the answer to that pretty damn fast. The violence in this is surprisingly brutal. It’s not nearly at Robocop levels, but it doesn’t pull punches and the scenes of Grey taking revenge on these assholes are satisfyingly visceral. Also, and I won’t give it away, but this has one of the better twist endings that I have seen in some time. It probably has the best twist ending since another sci-fi movie from a few years ago (I won’t name it here because I don’t want to make it so obvious that it’s a spoiler), but that’s also because the movies essentially have the same twist ending. Still, I didn’t see it coming. A bit derivative, but effective.
So, why am I not giving this a glowing review when I spent the last few paragraphs praising it? Because it’s a film of solid moments that don’t add up to a cohesive whole. Based on the trailer, I was expecting a throwback to sleazy revenge flicks of the late 70s and early 80s, but in a sci-fi setting. The idea of setting Death Wish in the world of Blade Runner is a pretty damn good one. However, the movie feels choppy and doesn’t integrate all of these influences together in a fluid way. One can see what scenes are inspired by Death Wish or Robocop or Blade Runner rather than having all of those influences permeate throughout the whole film. As a result, I often got bored or frustrated with it as I wished that it would simply pick a genre and stick with it. For the first half hour, I was loving the film. Right up to the first time Grey kills a gang member, it felt like it was delivering what I expected from the trailer. But then it spends quite a bit of time in pure sci-fi territory and I impatiently waited for it to turn back into a revenge film. It doesn’t do anything particularly poorly, it just tries to do too much.
This is a decent movie with excellent individual scenes. I applaud it for its ambition and style, but its been awhile since a movie fought so hard against my desire to like it. It’s worth checking out if you like any of the other movies that I’ve mentioned in this review and are interested in the idea of a remix of all of them together, but temper your expectations a bit. Upgrade isn’t worth running to the theater, but its worth seeing at least as a rental on Amazon or something.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upgrade_(film)#/media/File:UpgradePoster.jpg
