Upgrade | 3 ½ out of 4 Stars
By Kyle Osborne
Director and Screenwriter Leigh Whannell, the guy (along with producing partner James Wan) whose “Saw” and “Insidious” movies have made him very rich and famous, has crafted a taut revenge thriller that is unlike those in his Horror catalog. For me, “Upgrade” is his best film yet. It’s also a departure from those aforementioned franchises.
Set in the near future, Grey Trace (perfectly cast Logan Marshall Green) stubbornly works on old American muscle cars, resisting the newfangled self-driving cars that are the new norm. He’d rather get grease on his hands than be emasculated by a car that reduces him to just a passenger.
Not so for his wife, who works for a tech company that embraces forward thinking folks of her ilk.
One fateful evening, the couple are cornered by thugs and Grey’s wife is murdered before his eyes as he looks on helplessly. Waking up in the hospital some time later, Grey learns that he’s a quadriplegic who will live the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Whannell smartly makes the future recognizable—a lot of the hardware of the future, for instance, involves medical technology and things that make Grey’s life alone easier. In other words, if this is Science Fiction, then the science is not given short shrift.
A creepy tech company billionaire approaches Grey one day with a proposition: he can implant a chip into Grey that will give him the full use of his limbs once more, AND, it will make him stronger and faster than one could have ever imagined. It’s like Death Wish meets The Six Million Dollar Man.
Why Death Wish? Because the people who killed Grey’s wife are about to get their asses kicked in the most hyper-violent, bone-crunching, blood spewing way—and it’s friggin’ awesome! And he doesn’t just use his new muscles, he also listens to the voice inside his head—the voice of his implant—too help him solve the crime.
The story isn’t just a connect-the-dots of vengeance tale, it has things to say about medical ethics, legal issues and whether society should do something just because it can do something.
I’m not going to go much further—it’s fun to see this mash-up bring the different genre elements together to make something unique unto itself. Yeah, you’ll recognize various bits and pieces from a million other stories, but you probably haven’t seen them come together quite this way.
So I am shutting my mouth right now.
Oh, about the violence: I want to be clear that I am against all violence in real life. Movie violence, on the other hand, can be cathartic—seeing the bad guys get what’s coming to them? That’s as old as the movies themselves. Enjoy the release—it’s only make believe.
“Upgrade” is rated R and runs 95 minutes. Read my interview with James Whannell here: http://www.entertainmentordie.com/2018/06/whannell/
Interview: James Whannell, Creator of ‘Saw’ and ‘Insidious’ Makes Cool New Movie