Upgrade

Upgrade screams low-budget, sci-fi action flick which usually straddles the line of VOD land or ridiculous bad Netflix originals, (The Cloverfield Paradox, The Titan, Mute), however, this is an Upgrade over these forgettable films (if you can call them that) and is a really enjoyable watch.

It’s a futuristic action flick that mashes up the old classics of Robocop, Johnny Mnemonic and Minority Report together to conjure up a simple story of revenge.

Logan Marshall-Green stars as the lead character in this film, who I really thought had the screen charisma to be a star after his roles in Prometheus and Quarry, but this film maybe his ceiling.

Regardless, he’s the husband who’s wife is murdered in front of his eyes, after his self driving smart car short circuits, crashing into a homeless encampment where he’s promptly extracted by mercenaries to watch is wife be executed and himself being turned into a paraplegic.

Obviously it’s a setup but his dire situation leads him to a brilliant engineer with a prototype cure that will allow the use of his limbs as well as other abilities through inserting an artificial intelligence system into his body… but could this too be a set up?

I’ll just say that one of my favorite parts of the film is watching Marshall-Green stand-up and regain his muscle movement as if resurrected back to life like the monster of Frankenstein (add Frankenstein’s Monster to the mash-up).

With full-mobility and only he and the crazy engineer knowing he can now walk, he seeks out justice. Find his wife’s killers, but find them in the Sherlock Holmes way and not the Rambo II way.

He’s an average guy that wants to help the police, however, STEM, the implant now in his system that talks to him and allows him to walk is more about decisive in its execution… Literally. And when activated the dude moves like Neo from the Matrix (add Matrix to the mash up) which sets up for some pretty good hand-to-hand combat scenes.

But there’s other Neo’s up against him. A teams of biological ex-military experiments with riffles implanted into their arms and snot buggers that can crawl inside your nostrils and kill you from within. It’s actually pretty damn cool.

So cool you kind of wish as a viewer to stick in that world much longer because these bad guys are new, lethal and very interesting. But alas, the story must go on and bring us to a very worthwhile climax. Who’s good, who’s bad, what’s right, what’s wrong is a decision left to the viewers… but it’s worth the watch to find out for yourselves.

Not as good as Total Recall or Minority Report but not too far behind either.