Review: Upgrade

Image courtesy of BH Tilt.

Leigh Whannell's "Upgrade" is a gory, fast paced, often amusing and mostly ridiculous sci-fi thriller that channels "Robocop," but minus the conflicted conscience. The film peddles in extreme violence, but the story surrounding it is often so silly that it's hard to get too put off by it. This is the type of B thriller that could become surprise hit or cult success, but only somewhat deservedly.

The film is set in some distant future, where mechanic Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) and his wife (Melanie Vallejo) are first seen during a trip to sell a custom-made vehicle to a visionary inventor named Eron (Harrison Gilbertson, who gets a chance to really ham it up here), whose work involves a program known as STEM that can help the physically disabled to gain control over their bodies via an implant.

Sure enough, no sooner than Grey leaves Eron's house, he and his wife are accosted by a group of thugs, who murder Grey's wife and leave him a paraplegic. He agrees to allow Eron to implant STEM in his spine, and Grey is soon unnerved to find that the operating system - for lack of a better word - actually speaks into his ear in a voice that sounds eerily similar to HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Grey immediately dives into attempting to solve his wife's murder, despite warnings from the detective (Betty Gabriel) on the case. He tracks down the men and when faced with violence, he is surprised to learn that STEM can take over his body and protect him, all the while inflicting maximum damage on his attackers. There's a pretty gruesome scene early on when Grey slices a guy's face in half, only to be topped later by a nastier one in which he slices and dices a bad guy's face to get information out of him.

One of the elements that makes "Upgrade" darker - and more unsettling, although I'm not sure this was the filmmakers' intention - is that, unlike Robocop, Grey's early moral qualms about smashing and bashing his opponents into pulp soon give way to his need for information and, therefore, he's willing to resort to torture to get it.

There's a plot twist toward the film's end that I probably should have seen coming - and this is because "Upgrade" doesn't really tread new ground, despite its seeming attempt to provide a warning about enabling technology to become smarter than humans. Better movies - the first two "Terminator" pictures - have done much more with similar material. But "Upgrade" isn't without its pleasures. It's a summer movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, it's engrossing and visually capable. It's also fairly goofy. But for those seeking a reprieve from summer sequel-itis, it might do the trick.