FILM REVIEW: 6 UNDERGROUND

Many have stated that Michael Bay is the Antichrist, and that he is emblematic of all that is wrong with Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. His latest assault on the senses, 6 Underground (2019), is not likely to change many people’s negative opinions about his infamous reputation as the master of cinema as mass destruction. With that being said, 6 Underground is so deliriously over the top in its very Michael Bayish nature that there’s almost something fiendishly enjoyable about it.

For a Michael Bay film, you really don’t need to provide a plot summary about them, since they’re essentially all about blowing expensive crap up, but I will provide one anyways. 6 Underground, not to be confused with Emir Kusturica’s masterpiece Underground or a film about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, is about a wealthy entrepreneur known only as One (Ryan Reynolds), who fakes his own death so that he can go undercover with a covert group of operatives to take out the most evil people in the world. It would have been brilliant if their first target was Michael Bay himself, but that would be too self-reflective for Bay.

But, really, 6 Underground is about Michael Bay spending Netflix’s millions of dollars so that he can go on a coke-fueled rampage with all his usual tools: one dimensional macho male characters who live in a world where all the women are lingerie super models, lots of shots of cool looking people standing in front of sports cars, scenes where characters do things that are so illogical that you wonder how they could figure out how to get out of bed in the morning...you get the point. And yet, despite the grating Michael Bayish nature of it all, you simply can’t take your eyes away from the insane mayhem on screen.

The opening car chase sequence is so viscerally exciting and well-staged that for a minute you might think you’re watching a vintage John Frankeinhemer action film. Bay literally throws every car chase cliche in the book at you, and event comments on them in an almost satirical manner, such as when he slows the film down to have our protagonists purposefully narrowly avoid hitting a woman with a baby and a pair of puppies. Bay also shows civilians getting mowed down all over the place, which is in contrast to Hollywood’s usual convention of car chases where miraculously no pedestrians are hit. 

For a moment, you almost think Bay is making a film that is a deconstruction of Hollywood studio action film cliches, and then he’ll cut to a close-up shot of a woman’s rear end in a short skirt, and you remember that you’re still seeing a Michael Bay film. That is not to say that the other action set pieces in 6 Underground don’t live up to the opening sequence, because they surprisingly do. I don’t want to give away too much, but Bay stages an escape from a skyscraper in a manner that you have not seen before, and ends the film with a sequence involving a magnetized yacht that is almost surreal in its bonkers nature.

The best way to describe 6 Underground would be to call it an R-rated Looney Tunes cartoon. The frenzied and gravity defying action scenes almost recall the vibrant creativity of Frank Tashlin films like Son of Paleface and Who’s Minding The Store? However you want to define it as, an integral aspect of cinema is about the illusion of movement, from August and Louis Lumiere’s 1896 silent film The Arrival of a Train, which caused audiences to jump out of their seats because they thought the moving train on screen was real, to the frenetic action films of John Woo. I’m not saying Bay is as innovative as the Lumiere brothers or John Woo, but he is a highly skilled practitioner of depicting action film mayhem and destruction, and that is something that not everyone can execute successfully.

So, in summary, the question remains— is 6 Underground a good film? It all depends on how you define good. If you define good as being a film that is complex thematically and deals with deep philosophical issues, then 6 Underground is embarrassing. If you define good as a film that is entertaining and which knows how to keep the viewer involved in its elaborate action set pieces, then 6 Underground might be even better than good.

You can say what you will about Michael Bay being the most destructive force of nature to arrive on our planet since the invention of stinky tofu (which I personally like), but you can’t say that Michael Bay isn’t consistent in the very Michael Bayishness of his films. With 6 Underground, it feels like Michael Bay is taking all the criticism that has been thrown at him throughout his career, and purposefully amplifying it on a whole other level of Bayhem. Bay seems to live in a world that most of us don’t see, and that world may even be Hell, but at least he’s doing what he loves.

FILM REVIEW: PARASITE

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) is like the wild and crazy evil twin of Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters. While both films deal with a family in poverty who resort to extreme measures to survive, their cinematic methods are polar opposites. While Shoplifters is a quiet and subtle film, Parasite is a rapidly paced and boisterous dark comedy/thriller. Koreeda makes more introspective arthouse family dramas, while Joon-ho is a practitioner of more audience friendly genre films; this is reflected in the drastically different approaches to the topic of class inequality in Parasite and Shoplifters.

Parasite is about a financially struggling family of con artists who infiltrate themselves into the lives of a wealthy family. Joon-ho’s regular leading man Song Kang-ho plays Kim Ki-taek, the father of the con artists, while Jang Hye-jin, Park So-dam, and Choi Woo-shik play the mother, daughter, and son, respectively. Lee Sun-kyun and Cho Yeo-jeong play Park Dong-ik and Choi Yeon-gyo respectively, the easily manipulated father and mother of the wealthy family. Parasite is best enjoyed with less revealed about the plot details, but it is essentially about a power struggle between the con artist Ki-taek family and the prosperous Dong-ik family.

In a way, Parasite is like Luis Bunuel’s parodies of class warfare as directed by Quentin Tarantino, as it mixes social commentary with homages to popular genre tropes and scenes of almost cartoonish violence. This is both a strength of the film and a drawback, as Joon-ho’s attempts at creating a deeper social examination of class inequality are not as well executed as his action/suspense set pieces. As expertly crafted as the thriller and suspense aspects of Parasite are, where it falls short on are its attempts at social criticism and character development.

The characters in Parasite, from the destitute yet noble Kim Ki-tek to the wealthy but elitist Park Dong-ik and Choi Yeon-gyo, never reach anything beyond one dimensional caricatures. Also, the social critique and analysis of class warfare never penetrates deeper than surface level generalities of the wealthy taking advantage of those less fortunate than them. Parasite aspires to be both a mass entertainment thriller, while at the same time being an examination of societal divisions, but it doesn’t offer a more nuanced portrayal of this issue as Koreeda’s Shoplifters did.

Joon-ho wants us to feel justified outrage for the crass materialism and insensitivity of the wealthy class, but he does so in an overly obvious and heavy-handed manner. We see scenes of the Dong-ik family wallowing in their material wealth and looking down upon those outside their class, but everything in Parasite is portrayed in a black and white good versus evil level, without any shades of grey or ambiguity. In addition, because Joon-ho didn’t take the time to develop his performances beyond caricatures, we don’t have enough emotional investment to care about the characters for the last act of the film to work effectively. Instead, the conclusion of Parasite, which takes a turn into soap-operish drama, feels long and drawn out and wallows in sentimentality.

With that being said, where Parasite excels at is Joon-ho’s masterful handling of action and suspense scenes. As revealed in his previous films, Joon-ho is an expert at creating tension in elaborately designed set pieces; he does so through ingenious staging of the actors and their movement relative to camera placement and angles. This is best illustrated in a nerve wracking scene where three members of the Ki-tek family hide from the Dong-ik family under a table. Through clever use of dialogue and incisive blocking, Joon-ho creates a master class in ratcheting up tension in a set piece that would have made Alfred Hitchcock proud.

Parasite is a nearly great film that is prevented from being a masterpiece through its wobbly character development and strained attempts at social criticism. Joon-ho is still relatively early in his career, with only eight films completed thus far, so he still has time to develop and hone his craft as a filmmaker. Spielberg, who Joon-ho resembles in many ways, also took some time to find the right balance between expertly crafted action/thriller sequences and deep, incisive social critique, so Joon-ho needs to continue to develop as a filmmaker. Once he does master his art, I am sure we will be seeing some groundbreaking and innovative films from Joon-ho.