Michael Bay knows his way around a multimillion-dollar budget. This is, after all, the man who gifted the world a $150 million movie about aliens that turn into cars, and that was just the start — but the “Transformers” and “Bad Boys” director’s latest comes with a different kind of price tag. For his first Netflix-financed feature, Bay is again in $150 million territory, enough to earmark his “6 Underground” as the streaming giant’s second-most expensive original ever. The first is still “Bright,” a critical laughingstock that overcame biting reviews to become a massive hit for its ambitious owner.
Those are big shoes to fill, but Bay and his wildly charismatic cast (led by Ryan Reynolds, and that’s only the beginning of the crew’s charm) are more than up to the task in an impossibly cool, often incomprehensible vigilante thriller that seems destined to launch a massive new franchise for Netflix.
If you like Bayhem, you’re going to love “6 Underground,” which opens with a nearly 15-minute-long car chase that pokes fun at spy flicks, the Spice Girls, and even Michelangelo’s statue of David while also unfurling non-stop action and enough civilian bloodshed to explain why no traditional studio would reasonably make it. Cut fast, short, and with a frenzy befitting the use of illegal drugs — much like a particularly good Bud Light commercial — the film is rife with narrative questions and plot holes the size of the small Middle Eastern country (aka Turgistan, what a world) Reynolds and his misfit mob are trying to liberate.