Upgrade - Review

Revenge stories are one of the most common stories human beings can tell. Everything from Hamlet to The Count of Monte Cristo to Death Wish contains elements of a wronged person getting righteous vengeance on the parties responsible. It’s an easy story to tell, and there’s a sense of catharsis as an audience member watching characters enact retribution. Walking into Upgrade, I was expecting Death Wish, but with minor science fiction trappings. And while the film is a very simple revenge story, the science fiction world it presents pushes the film over the edge into something more.
 
In the not too distant future, the Internet of things has gone into overdrive. Everything in a house is wired. Self-driving cars are commonplace, and police heavily survey citizens using drones. Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green – CAA|3 Arts) is a luddite, who spends his time rebuilding old muscle cars and selling them to the ultra rich. He is happily married to Asha (Melanie Vallejo – Sue Barnett and Associates, AU) who works for a major cybernetics firm and doesn’t quite understand her husband’s distrust of technology. One night after delivering a muscle car to Eron (Harrison Gilbertson – APA|Helen Pandos Management,UK), an Elon Musk-esque tech mogul, Trace’s self-driving car malfunctions and they crash. Grey and Asha are then mugged by a group of thugs, led by Fisk (Benedict Hardie – Lisa Mann Creative Management). Asha is murdered while Grey is left as quadriplegic. Three months later, Eron offers Grey the chance to regain the use of his arms and legs by placing an experimental computer chip called STEM (voiced by Simon Maiden – Sue Barnett and Associates, AU) in his spine. This gives Grey the use of his body, and he proceeds to go on a roaring rampage of revenge taking down the people who killed his wife, while avoiding Cortez (Betty Gabriel – Greene and Associates|Generate), a police detective who’s hot on his trail. This ultimately leads to a conspiracy about who really put the hit out on his wife.
 
Let me be the first to say that Upgrade kinda rocks. While it will win no awards for its simplistic story, in a genre exercise like this telling a simple story is to the film’s benefit. Writer/director Leigh Whannel (Paradigm|Stacy Testro International) is allowed to explore the corners of this oddly familiar future world, and give some familiar tropes with new twists. Once the STEM computer is placed in Grey’s spine, instead of becoming a total unrepentant badass, he’s more an ordinary dude who barely comprehends what’s happening to him. So when he’s running around killing people in brutal ways, he is more surprised than you’d expect in other movies of this genre. Furthermore, the STEM implant talks to Grey and that adds some great moments of pitch black comedy.
 
In its second act, Upgrade throws several loopy sci-fi ideas at the screen – guns implanted in people’s forearms, killer nanites that are sneezed out by one character to kill another, and a gender fluid hacker who’s trying to bring down the system. These aren’t explored in depth (nor should they be) but they add a lot of texture to a movie that could have blandly gone through the revenge motions we’ve seen a thousand times.
 
Whannel’s direction is moody and stylish – he goes for a neon blue and red color palette in some scenes (aka the Blade Runner look). And the action scenes are short, brutal and effective.
 
I’ve been a huge Logan Marshall-Green fan ever since his turn in 2015’s The Invitation,  and he’s fantastic here. He’s tasked to play the physical side of a Terminator-esque killing machine, while also being completely shocked and amazed at all the crazy things he can do. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, and Green pulls it off admirably. He also gives the role a dark sense of humor. The rest of the cast doesn’t really have much to do except fill their narrative functions, and Betty Gabriel – so good in last year’s Get Out – is sort of wasted here. However, Benedict Hardie chews the scenery as the villain Fisk, sneering and killing his way through the film.
 
On the whole Upgrade is a lot of fun. And while the story follows a predictable path, it’s enjoyable for the world it builds and science fiction ideas it presents. Also, the twist ending is awesome. There just needed to be a little bit more depth to the plot to make it an all time classic.
 
Two and a half stars out of four.