Michael Bay’s 6 Underground opens with a promise it cannot keep. The tagline reads, “They say no one can save the world. Meet no one.” That is a good line. The film underneath it is a 128-minute blur of noise, and Netflix paid $150 million for the privilege.
Trailer, via Netflix.
A Billionaire Named Magnet
The premise is thin, even for an action film. Ryan Reynolds plays One, an American billionaire and philanthropist who made his fortune inventing neodymium magnets. After witnessing atrocities in the fictional Central Asian nation of Turgistan, he fakes his own death and recruits five strangers to abandon their pasts and hunt criminals the world will not touch.
Each recruit gets a number. Mélanie Laurent is Two, a spy. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is Three, a hitman. Ben Hardy is Four, a parkour runner and thief. Adria Arjona is Five, a doctor. Dave Franco is Six, a driver. They call themselves ghosts.
It is a clean setup for a franchise that never arrived.
Florence, and the Alfa Romeo
The team’s first mission lands in Florence, Italy. They interrogate the lawyer of Turgistan’s four highest-ranking generals, then flee across the city in a dayglow green Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, chased by the Mafia and Italian police.
Six dies just as they escape. His death is the film’s one real cost, and Bay spends it fast.
Days later, One recruits Blaine, a former Delta Force sniper carrying survivor’s guilt from Afghanistan, where he was ordered not to save his team. Blaine fakes his suicide and becomes Seven, played by Corey Hawkins.
The plan: topple Turgistan’s dictator, Rovach Alimov, and install his imprisoned brother Murat, a supporter of democracy, as the country’s new leader. Lior Raz plays Rovach. Payman Maadi plays Murat. The ghosts kill Rovach’s generals in Las Vegas, find Murat, and pull him out of a penthouse prison in Hong Kong.
What Bay Does With $150 Million
Bay produced the film with Ian Bryce and Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Don Granger. The budget bought scale. It did not buy coherence.
The film premiered at The Shed in New York City on December 10, 2019, and hit Netflix on December 13. It is one of the most expensive Netflix original films ever made. That figure is the story here, and it is not a flattering one.
Reviews came back mixed, with criticism aimed squarely at Bay’s direction. Metacritic puts the film at 41 out of 100. That matches our own read.
Wernick and Reese wrote the script. The bones of a sharp comedic voice are visible in Reynolds’ delivery. But Bay’s camera never sits still long enough for a joke to land or a death to mean anything. The film cuts on every beat, which flattens every beat.
The Case Against
The cast is not the problem. Laurent and Hawkins are capable. Reynolds is doing his usual thing, and it works when the film lets him.
The problem is that 6 Underground wants credit for being about something. It stages a coup in a made-up country and asks the audience to cheer. It has a doctor and a sniper and a driver, and it uses them as props in a chase sequence.
The Florence chase is the film’s best stretch. It is also the only stretch with a shape. Everything after is escalation without stakes. Four gets caught during the Hong Kong extraction and beaten by one of Rovach’s men. Seven hesitates. That hesitation is the closest the film comes to a real idea, and it drops it.
6 Underground is not a disaster. It is a waste. A $150 million budget, a cast this good, and a premise built for a sequel — all spent on a film with no memory of its own scenes.
Reynolds and Bay together should produce something louder and stranger than this. Instead the film plays like a trailer stretched to 128 minutes.
The Numbers
- Title: 6 Underground (2019)
- Director: Michael Bay
- Writers: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
- Runtime: 128 minutes
- Budget: $150 million
- Premiere: December 10, 2019, The Shed, New York City
- Netflix release: December 13, 2019
- Metacritic: 41/100
- Score: 4.1 of 10
The parts are all here. A billionaire who fakes his death, a spy, a hitman, a thief, a doctor, a driver, a sniper, a dictator and his democratic brother. That is a full deck. Bay deals it face down.
4.1 of 10.
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