Upgrade is one of the best actions films I’ve ever seen

The style and tone alone are of which that I’ve never really felt in any other movie I’ve ever seen. Yes, the revenge story premise we have seen before, but the idea with S.T.E.M, how he communicates, how he operates, and what he can do is such a damn good idea and it’s incredibly impressive that they pulled it off as well as they did. Especially with the cinematography, which tracks the actor’s (Logan Marshall-Green) movements with what I believe was a phone taped to his back, to deliver some truly breathtaking camerawork. The action as well is incredible, it’s quick and brutal and its unlike anything I’ve seen before, the way S.T.E.M fights feels incredibly robotic but not slow, robotic doesn’t always have to mean slow. And Logan Marshal-Green’s incredibly performance tops it all off, as he’ll be beating up people whilst having no idea what he’s doing.

Also, the score is really freaking beautiful. It’s subtle but it always establishes the tone, especially with what I’d consider the movie’s theme, the three notes that you hear right after Grey’s wife dies, right as Grey heads home after disabling the input guards, and right before Grey enters Eron’s home near the very end.

Another thing I loved was how this was an incredibly violent movie where the gore serves a point. For every 2019 Hellboy with mindless violence that’s just violent because “we’re rated r woooooooo frick yeah”, the gore in Upgrade is there to make you kinda uncomfortable every time Stem messes someone up, as it makes Grey uncomfortable. Grey never truly wants to kill anyone except Eron, and he even has a change of heart and tries to save him. So many other movies make the lazy predictable move where the main character becomes some badass vigilante hero, but Grey is just a normal guy. And it’s a body horror movie, that first hit where the dude gets sliced through his mouth had me thinking “How the hell does somebody think this up?”.

I could go on for literal hours about how much I love this movie and honestly how I think it’s a flawless masterpiece, but long story short, this is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it’s hella re-watchable too.

Submitted October 23, 2020 at 01:25PM by JoeSnaffles https://ift.tt/3dSBQ5W