Upgrade (2018)
Rated R for strong violence, grisly images, and language
After watching Upgrade, the directorial debut of screenwriter and frequent James Wan collaborator Leigh Whannell, I felt much the same feeling that I did the first time I saw John Wick. The first thought that ran through my head was "damn, that was badass", and the second one was "now that's how you do an American version of Ghost in the Shell!". It was a gritty cyberpunk action thriller that made the most of its low Blumhouse budget, with vicious and stylish action scenes, inspired use of special effects, well-placed moments of pitch-dark comedy, some creative yet non-intrusive world-building, and a story and pair of lead characters that grab you by the collar and don't let go. Whannell, with just one film as a director under his belt, showed more promise here than any number of hyper-kinetic Greengrass-ripoff hack directors have with multiple films under their belts; if I were a Hollywood executive, I'd immediately be looking to hire Whannell to helm some bigger movies. It's not exactly a "thinking man's" sci-fi film, leaving its populist undertones about the effects of technology on humanity as just that while focusing mainly on finding new ways for our protagonist(s) to beat the snot out of people, but it's not a brain-dead spectacle, either. It's the sort of movie that I'm afraid might get lost in the heat of the summer blockbuster season, but I hope like hell it doesn't.
Grey Trace, our main character, is a gearhead who works on classic muscle cars for rich customers while his wife Asha makes the real money for the two of them working at a tech firm -- rather ironically, given that Grey is fairly distrustful of modern technology and its omnipresence in the near-future, highly automated world in which they live. His fears are seemingly validated when, while returning home from delivering a Trans Am to Eron, the rich, socially awkward CEO of one of the rivals of the company Asha works for, Asha's self-driving car is hacked and crashed by criminals, who kill Asha and shoot Grey in the spine and leave him for dead. Living miserably as a quadriplegic dependent on the robots and computers he hates in order to keep him alive, Grey is offered a second chance at a normal life when Eron approaches him with an offer to implant an experimental computer chip called STEM that will repair his spine. Able to walk again, Grey now seeks to bring his wife's killers to justice, leading him down a winding trail that soon points to something much bigger than a mere robbery, all while the police detective Cortez investigates the recent wave of murders and the seemingly crippled man at the center of them (Grey, you see, can't let anybody know he can walk because of the experimental nature of the procedure). It helps that the STEM chip has a mind of its own, helping Grey along in his investigation with its intelligence, its connectivity, and -- most critically -- its ability to take control of Grey's body and turn him into a superhuman fighter.
Our lead character is essentially a two-for-one deal, and fortunately, we get two very solid actors in the role. Logan Marshall-Green plays Grey as the all-American Joe who's suspicious of the advance of technology around him, finding his skill set obsolete and himself lucky to be married to a successful career woman. His lack of familiarity with the technology in the film makes him something of a stand-in for the viewer as they're introduced to all of it, from self-driving cars to the gun implants in people's arms to the capabilities of the other character inhabiting his body, the STEM chip. STEM, voiced by Australian actor Simon Maiden, is the machine-like straight man to the altogether more human Grey, their interactions with one another played for a mix of comedy and tension as STEM brings Grey into unfathomable situations and Grey wonders if STEM's interests fully align with his own beyond the need to keep both of them alive. Grey is astonished by the staggering violence that his body, when under STEM's control, can inflict, most notably in the film's first real action scene when he's apologizing to the crook that STEM is brutally murdering, and overall, together they make for something of a buddy-cop pair as their personalities play off each other and clash over the course of the film. Betty Gabriel from Get Out, meanwhile, plays Cortez as a well-meaning, but nonetheless antagonistic detective who's just finding out how deep the rabbit hole goes with STEM, Grey, and the people they're chasing, while Harrison Gilbertson gives the tech genius Eron an awkward shiftiness that makes it hard to tell just how much to trust him and Benedict Hardie is a slick, yet still threatening presence as Eron's main goon Fisk.
As for Leigh Whannell's work behind the camera, while he is a first-time director, it's clear that he's learned a lot from working with James Wan for most of his career. The action isn't omnipresent, coming mostly in fairly short bursts, but when it comes, it hits hard in a manner reminiscent of '90s Hong Kong action flicks with its stylized fistfights and shootouts, all the better to demonstrate the machine-like efficiency of STEM when it's in control of Grey's body. Whannell stretches the tiny budget of this film quite far, between the abundant practical gore effects that evoke the horror movies he cut his teeth writing and a car chase that looks like it came from a much bigger action movie. Everything is clear and well-placed in a way that too few action movies these days tend to be, and that extends beyond just the action into the world-building. Whannell spends a lot of the film creating a believable cyberpunk world clearly rooted in our own yet visually distinct, between the vehicle designs, the cybernetic implants, the VR addicts, the police drones, the bad-guy bar where ear-piece phones are banned (probably because they're conducting shady business and don't want to be tracked), the sparse, ascetic design of both Grey and Eron's upper-class homes, and the computer hacker Jaime of ambiguous gender. In particular, the film eschews the typical Blade Runner imagery of a cyberpunk metropolis dominated by towering skyscrapers, instead using suburban slums in the Sun Belt (South Central Los Angeles especially) as its main inspiration and combining traditionally "ghetto" imagery with sci-fi technology, such as having a "smart" table where one can read emails that's covered in empty bottles of beer and pills. The imagery in this film manages to imply a lot to the viewers about the world in which the characters live without directly stating much, letting the film flow without much need for big infodumps.
The Bottom Line
One of the most welcome surprises this year as far as action movies go, Upgrade is a viciously violent and wickedly entertaining little movie that's well-acted and well-thought-out from start to finish. Don't miss it; I'm sure glad I didn't.
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