Six Underground tells the story of six individuals (Reynolds, Laurent, Garcia-Rulfo, Hardy, Arjona and Hawkins) who form a vigilante squad in order to take down some of the world's most corrupt individuals. After a problematic mission in Florence, they do obtain the whereabouts of the dictator of Turgistan (Raz) in order to replace him with his imprisoned brother (Maadi) who is an outspoken critic of the dictator who would likely lead the sovereign nation as a democracy.

I was intrigued by the premise of this movie, it is very similar to that of Suicide Squad, Rogue One and the first Guardians of the Galaxy except in a real-life setting. However it does fall into some of the pratfalls of these movies, for example, very thin characterization of its heroes and villains. It does make clear who is who and what their basic morality and skill sets are, however that is basically all they are given, the rest of the character is their abiding by the rules mentality, endless amount of pop culture references and maybe some relationship drama. No one in this movie really has a character arc, which is a little problematic because their movie has set up plot threads in the squad's personal lives, and it just seemed like the mission was the main story. The team needed to move on from their lives by dying and leaving all their personal problems in the past, and the movie couldn't even do that correctly. And this drama does not even really factor into the main plot in a way that is relevant. This is where they could have really used the Guardians of the Galaxy style of character building: a group of strangers who are generally incompatible set aside their differences for the good of the nation, however it ends up copying Rogue One and Suicide Squad.

Due to its rapid character introduction, the scattershot plot structure and shaky camerawork in its action sequences, it is exhausting to keep track of everything in this movie. Don't get me wrong the set pieces and action sequences when does right are phenomenal, however the trailer does give away the best moments in the movie. There are some really cool set pieces, particularly one on a boat, one on the Duomo and the crane sequence, however they are almost all given away by the trailer and the ones that aren't are shrouded by so much shaky camerawork that it is difficult to tell who is fighting who or who is winning. The parkour scenes are definitely the best filmed and the first car chase in this movie probably looked really cool on a storyboard however a director that cares about fluidity would have made it more engaging by just keeping the camera in focus or by not cutting every two seconds. The film is directed by Michael Bay, and if I didn't know that I would have guessed in about ten minutes.

This is really is the movie that will be most associated with Michael Bay. It has all of his signature styles cranked up to eleven. Anything that has been associated with him: explosions, lens flares, military and helicopters, low angles, product placement, bass drops, strobe light effects etc. are all on display, and fans of him will love this movie because of that. People who has a thirst for action will also get a kick out of it as this set piece after set piece of violence with occasional breaks for talking. So if you have run out of Fast and Furious movies or wished the Mission Impossible movies were simpler in their story, this is for you. However a much more satisfying experience, at least for me is to just watch the trailer.