Upgrade 2018

 

This is a film that has all the old school pulpy thrills that can easily be described as 'Robocop meets Death Wish'. It's low budget futuristic look and feel is literally comparable to both the likes of John Carpenter and Paul Verhoeven.

Logan Marshall Green looks and acts like Tom Hardy which for this film is perfect casting. This looks and plays like a Tom Hardy movie albeit a very lean, low budget one. But Green is his own man and he is exactly why such a high concept film as Hardware exists and works so well.

Everything from the bullshit talking future car to the unbelievable pseudo science, it is designed to make me hate this cliched style. Even the husband and wife have the contrast of her being a futurist and him being a Luddite. So of course, five minutes later bad things will happen to her and he will be forced into the world he can't understand without a little help. And suddenly I am a believer.



The death that begins our story is brutal but effective. This movie doesn't shy away from it's violence but uses it to fuel it's tale of revenge. But it is brutal which is also the reason why everything works so well. It's bold and fearless like Robocop which I can compare it to proudly. The violence is played for horror one minute and humor the very next. The investigation of the murder of Grey's wife brings our hero in contact with a police detective whom he can't shake after the bodies start to pile up.

In the future where they can have robots make one a protein shake they would have already invented some medical device for someone who is a quadriplegic. Maybe we had to see his helplessness and sorrow before we could enjoy his wrath. This one has a slow, sad boil but when it gets going it really gets going and it's a blast to watch. The villains are all really bad so as a revenge fantasy the film also works. That is a hard genre to make fresh again and Upgrade succeeds by going full retard on it's concept.

It's plays like an independent film and much of it's enjoyment comes from the imagination that goes into many of it's scenes. Like Frankenstein it takes joy in the sense of wonder and discovery and pain of being alive after it's main character was dead for all intents and purposes.

When he starts to hear the computer chip in his head talk to him, everything changes. The A.I. joins him in the hunt for his wife's killer. Again these scenes are full of imagination, camera tricks, stunt work but minimal computerized effects. That too fits perfectly with the film's aesthetic. The fight scene editing is the real star here. You don't need fancy effects if you have a solid story.

I saw where this one was going from down the block but I had a lot of fun getting to the end of this picture. It's lean and as mean as it needed to be to work. It's also interesting science fiction at a human level. A fine full-bodied science fiction thriller with a fresh take on an old story of revenge.