BH Tilt
Dystopian and technophobic themes are one of those things that have been very popular in the past few decades, but they tend to emerge when people have more fears of the future. These sorts of things can really vary in quality, like episodes of Black Mirror. And often what such a movie is trying to say doesn’t entirely line up with what it wants to say.
Upgrade comes from writer/director Leigh Whannell, and it takes place in what appears to be a future version of Los Angeles where self-driving cars are the norm, yet there’s still a buyer’s market for the old driver-only versions. Tom Hardy lookalike Logan Marshall-Green stars as Grey Trace (trace being a vague technological reference), a mechanic of the ‘old’ version of cars and not as big into newer tech business. It is unclear how far into the future this is or if Grey is a hipster or a Luddite.
Grey’s wife is Asha (Melanie Vallejo), has an unclear job working for giant tech company Cobalt — that’s a classic sci-fi company name for you. They have a great marriage, so you know she’s going to die soon. Sure enough, on the way back from delivering a car to the super rich nerdy CEO of different tech company Vessel — name of Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson), which evokes similar feelings to something like ‘Elon Musk’ — there is a mysterious accident where the car’s self-driving computer loses control and they crash.
But then even more mysteriously, a group of armed thugs appears and attacks them. One kills Asha and another shoots Grey in the back, crippling him. Grey is now forced to use a wheelchair and is unable to use his arms or legs. That’s when he gets a crazy opportunity from Keen — implant a new, super advanced computer thingy called STEM and maybe walk again.
Naturally it appears that STEM can not only heal Grey completely, but it can talk to him in his head. And also control his arms and legs if Grey permits it, which means Grey can now fight like an MMA expert and have access to the perfect memory of a computer. So he begins his quest to take revenge, and so far it’s a cute conceit with some well done action scenes. But now finally, the movie gets more complicated, and it’s a mixed bag.
Ultimately, the movie goes bleak and dark, with layers of subterfuge and mystery. This is when things get more interesting, although there are still a few clichés that the movie can’t quite escape from. The world feels well defined though, in a minimalist way that helps you understand the newer rules.
Logan Marshall-Green does a pretty great job, all things considered, handling both the tricky scenes of being disabled and the odd, jerky, robotic fight scenes. He’s very good, even if some of the other roles aren’t quite as strong. There’s a side plot of a local cop Cortez (Betty Gabriel) trying to figure out what’s going on that never quite works until the very end, and many of the bad guys or hacker types are ill-defined or clichéd.
Overall, it’s a fun movie once it gets past the hump of setting up the whole ‘upgraded human’ angle, sinking into action escapism and technophobic horror. And I didn’t hate the ending at all.
Upgrade has a run time of 1 hour 35 minutes and is rated R for strong violence, grisly images, and language.
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