Upgrade (2018) [Blu-ray]
Action | Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline: Not Man. Not Machine. More.

After his wife is killed during a brutal mugging that also leaves him paralyzed, Grey Trace is approached by a billionaire inventor with an experimental cure that will "upgrade" his body. The cure--an Artificial Intelligence implant called STEM--gives Grey physical abilities beyond anything experienced, and the ability to relentlessly claim vengeance against those who murdered his wife and left him for dead.

Storyline: Set in the near-future, technology controls nearly all aspects of life. But when Grey, a self-identified technophobe, has his world turned upside down, his only hope for revenge is an experimental computer chip implant called Stem.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, August 21, 2018 Leigh Whannell is best known as the brain behind the Saw and Insidious franchises, but it's only recently that he's stepped away from the keyboard and taken a shot at directing. His debut feature Insidious: Chapter 3 was a solid genre entry, but his second feature, Upgrade, should rightly be the film that absolutely puts him on the map as both a writer and director. A future-set tech thriller with chilling overtones that explore the integration of man and machine and the near future reliance on and advances in technology, the film blends some established concepts with high end writing that essentially reimagines RoboCop as a less excessively violent and socially pointed feature and morphs it into a compelling story of an increasingly symbiotic, and perhaps even hostile, relationship between a physically wounded and emotionally wrecked man and the supposed saving grace artificial intelligence that allows him to regain his mobility but, perhaps, at the cost of his ability to control it. Whannell has hit a home run with the movie; it's unquestionably one of the best things to arrive in 2018.

Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is an old-fashioned, hands-on sort who's finds the future's increasingly efficient technology that so often removes the human hand from the equation to be less than ideal. But his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) is the opposite, riding in a self-driving car and enjoying the fruits of more free time for herself and her husband. Grey restores classic cars for a living, and he insists that Asha accompany him on the delivery of his latest project to a wealthy tech visionary named Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson) who has invented STEM, a radical new technology that promises to revolutionize the integration of man and machine. On the way home, Asha's self-driving car malfunctions and crashes. Quickly after the accident, the two are pulled from the car. Asha is murdered and Grey is left paralyzed, his spine deliberately severed by the assailants. Some time later, the wheelchair bound Grey, unable to emotionally continue with his life, attempts suicide by overdose. He awakens in the hospital to find Eron who is offering him the opportunity to join with STEM and regain the use of his body and his life. He reluctantly agrees to the operation and awakens to suddenly find himself able to move again. He's also in communication with STEM. STEM immediately proves valuable, discovering clues in the evidence police detective Cortez (Betty Gabriel) has left for Grey to study. As Grey, with STEM's help, tracks down his wife's killers, he begins to realize that there's more to the AI's motivation than simply helping him solve a murder.

Screenwriters, directors, and actors often undertake the unenviable challenge of gaining audience trust and sympathy right off the bat when tragedy strikes minutes into a movie, before there's ample opportunity to fall in love with characters and become invested in their lives and relationships. Upgrade succeeds, the first of many signs of something special coming together within the movie's futuristic fabric. There's a raw emotional spillage as the distressed Grey watches his wife perish, literally unable to move a muscle and seeing her final breath mere inches from his eyes. His struggles as a literally and figuratively broken man carry enough weight to allow the audience to become invested in his plight and cheer for his success when Eron mysteriously arrives with the promise of a better future and the operation proves a success. Logan Marshall-Green easily draws the audience into his plight and his recovery, which makes the coming antagonism between himself and the world around his wife's murder, not to mention the brewing emotional disconnect between himself and STEM, all the more compelling.

The two form something of a symbiotic relationship, at least at first, as STEM gives Grey the gift of mobility while Grey serves as a host for STEM, though it quickly becomes apparent that STEM is not programed to simply help Grey get through his day. STEM, with Grey's permission, can overtake control of its host's body to commit acts of violence on others. Grey is often repulsed by the idea but ultimately agrees to be STEM's vessel of violence both in the process of investigating his wife's murder and in avenging her death. But over time, STEM's increasingly hard push on Grey's moral compass put the host and the AI in conflict, as the former brings emotion and humanity to the relationship and the later only cold data and an intrinsic survival instinct. And perhaps more. As the film pushes to and through its climax, it engenders several immediate reactions as the twists continue to mount, one after another in rapid-fire succession over the course of the final few minutes, ultimately ending with a thought-provoking statement on human nature and technological inroads into the organic.

Upgrade sort of has the feel of a Neill Blomkamp film, and one could see Sharlto Copley in the role of Fisk, one of the film's key villains. But Whannell does make the film his own, with some impressive camera work that accentuates Grey's sudden superhuman powers and a hard-edge industrial score that compliments the movie's bleak output and extreme violence. Logan Marshall-Green excels in the lead role, building up his character only to see him torn down into a shell of a man in a matter of minutes. His new lease on life puts further emotional strain, of a different kind, on the character as he deals with not only the investigation proper into his wife's death but the growing inner conflict between himself and his implant that proves to be both a blessing and a curse. The performance is inwardly layered and ever evolving, and that's matched by the the actor rising to the challenge of portraying both Grey and STEM's physical takeover of Grey's body, often separately but sometimes collectively as the the confrontation gradually grows and the two engage on the battlefields of Grey's body and mind. Several support players are very good, including Betty Gabriel as the cop assigned to Grey's case and Harrison Gilbertson who channels a young Leonardo DiCaprio as the man behind STEM's creation.

Upgrade evolves from a moving portrait of a wounded man to a fascinating story of flesh and tech symbiosis to a revenge tale and finally to an extremely satisfying twist ending that violently and cautiously speaks to the dangers of the merging of man and machine. The end twist evolves several times over several minutes, leaving this reviewer, anyway, thrilled, angered (which included a literal yell of disbelief and disappointment at the screen), and thrilled again within a matter of moments. Whannell may have already made a name for himself with Saw and Insidious, but he's made himself into a visionary with Upgrade and into one of this reviewer's favorite filmmakers. This is a wonderfully realized and executed picture that is absolutely one of my top ten picks for the year. Universal's Blu-ray is disappointingly absent any special features, but the video and audio presentations are of excellent quality. Very, very highly recommended.

[CSW] -4.1- It's a B movie blast with an unrelenting pace, fantastic fight choreography that doesn't skimp on the gleeful blood and gore, and never not fun or interesting to look at. Yeah some of the one-liner dialogue as delivered by Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) feels a bit forced and the plot isn't exactly clever or unique, with the exception of the human AI interaction. But damn it, it all works and it makes its own beautiful alchemy out of a bunch of borrowed parts. This is cheap genre filmmaking done damn right.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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