6 Underground’s marketing is based primarily on the presence of Ryan Reynolds, and the incomprehensible trailer is matched only by the incoherence of the film. This film is a mess. It’s disheartening when one watches 127 minutes of a movie and then wonders what the f*ck they just sat through.

Reynolds stars as One, a billionaire who fakes his death to become the leader of a group of anonymous vigilantes operating on a global scale. Their mission is to take down the despotic leader of the fictional country Turgistan, but first they’ll have to complete a rescue mission and assassinate some generals.

Reynolds first came to my attention playing a pre-med student in the TV show Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, and it was clear from that moment that he could be a big star. After appearing in a series of college frat-boy movies, he has reinvented himself as an action man with a comedic edge in movies like Deadpool. In my opinion, Reynolds is one of the most watchable of all of Hollywood’s leading men. He oozes charm and has used it to achieve tremendous success.

Even Reynolds’ charm can’t save 6 Underground.

Bay deliberately obscures the narrative by employing a non-linear structure that confuses rather than enhancing the flow. Sometimes starting with a flashback or flashforward makes sense when considering the dramatic tension that can build, but in 6 Underground there seems to be no purpose other than to bewilder the viewer. The action sequences and set pieces make little overall sense within the disorganised narrative.

Melanie Laurent features opposite Reynolds but is strangely restrained, showing none of the vitality on display in her turns in Inglourious Basterds or Now You See Me. The remainder of the ensemble are placeholders and play their roles without ever becoming interesting. Of course, this is a Michael Bay film, and therefore the action sequences are given far more attention than character development.

There are moments – brief, but moments nonetheless – where the action threatens to become enjoyable or a chase scene surprises. It’s all shot in glorious Michael Bay Vision as well, so you know it’s going to look ok. Those moments are mirages, however, and things peter out into a disappointing and confusing film with little to recommend it.

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The animation here looks stunning. I am completely in love with the visual style. The sharp-edged characters remind me of ‘Batman: the Animated Series’, whilst the backgrounds have a wonderful 60s vibe. The action is perfectly framed, and it’s clear that the animators have a good sense of how to both mimic live action features and take advantage of all that 2D animation has to offer.

The story is a mix of genres, including heist caper, James Bond-type spy movie and even a dash of Indiana Jones. Carmen herself, voiced by Gina Rodriguez, is a great lead, whilst Finn Wolfhard continues his ascent as the biggest star to emerge from ‘Stranger Things’, portraying whiz kid computer hacker, Player. But the MVP is truly Rafael Petardi as the clueless policeman on Carmen’s trail, Chase Devineaux. His delivery constantly gets the biggest laughs, even if the punchlines aren’t that clever.

Carmen has made the switch from baddie to goodie – strange when you consider we spent the original videogames trying to catch her, rather than playing as her – but the really weird part is how similar her origin story is to She-Ra’s.

I love the educational diversions here, precisely because they are so obviously shoehorned in. The basic geography lessons are kind of charming. It is frustrating, however, to watch the episode set in Australia. The accents are woeful, and what’s more they decided to go with a plot concerning a rocket launch near Uluru – a strange choice, considering there haven’t been any rocket launches in Australia since 1970. If I fancy some mental acrobatics, I could try to convince myself that the show is actually set in the 1960s (but a 1960s with internet and smartphones and etc. etc.)

The only other disappointment is that the plot features some ‘surprises’ that we adults can see coming from a long way off. This didn’t annoy me too much, since the narrative construction and characterisation is tight enough that said twists are quite cleverly plotted – everything makes sense, rather than having abrupt 180 twists for the sake of them.

As far as rebooting 80s IPs so that grown-up kids of the era can watch the shows with their kids, this cartoon is surprisingly lacking in cynicism. Where ‘Stranger Things’ annoys me with its habit of reassuring late gen Xers and Millennials that yes, their era was GOAT, Carmen Sandiego is a solid story, well-told. Bring on season 2.

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Christopher McQuarrie, the sometimes-brilliant, sometimes-naff writer is firing on all cylinders here. This is much more in the league of Rogue Nation, Edge of Tomorrow and Jack Reacher than it is The Mummy, Jack the Giant Slayer or The Tourist. In fact, this is very much a sequel to Rogue Nation (unsurprising, since it was the last M:I film) but also feels like the end of this second chapter of the franchise (films 3-6, that is.)

All the standard Mission: Impossible stuff is here. We have a plot that’s almost too complicated to follow, Hunt has no idea who to trust and the twists and turns appear as frequently as the action scenes. In fact, the approach to action here got me thinking about what’s been missing from big budget Hollywood recently. People complain about superhero movies’ over-reliance on VFX, but that’s not the problem. What’s missing from those films is tension. An awesome action scene is all about the set up; if there’s no tension along the way, the pay-off means nothing.

And Mission: Impossible has almost always been about establishing tension (except perhaps the second one). It’s something Christopher Nolan did exceptionally well in his Batman films, but has otherwise been missing from superhero films because they’re impatient to get to the bombastic stuff (see also The Meg.) The fact that very few other franchises are attempting this perhaps explains why Mission: Impossible has succeeded so consistently at the box office.

Cruise is his reliable self, getting younger by the day because of his alien DNA and/or deal with Satan and/or ability to time travel. There are a number of series regulars around him, but newbies Angela Bassett and Vanessa Kirby are welcome inclusions. Henry Cavill is good, but as with Jeremy Renner’s character in the previous two films, the filmmakers haven’t quite nailed the characterization of the “equally-capable offsider”. I’m not sure if there’s some pride there on Cruise’s part (he is also a producer, after all) or simply the fault of the writers, but they have yet to strike gold with someone Hunt can bounce off who isn’t comic relief or a love interest.

The only other criticism is that I saw all the twists coming. Don’t get me wrong – it didn’t ruin the experience – but an air of predictability hangs about the film.

As far as action goes, however, Fallout just blows the competition out of the water. It has one of the most insane climaxes of any action film I’ve seen in recent years, and yet it still manages to remain visceral and grounded. And lest I belabor the point: this is because it puts in all the hard work before the action hits.

One more thing: this is an example of a film with extensive reshoots (check out how many scenes from the original trailer are missing) that still came out of the gate swinging. Proof that reshoots don’t always spell disaster.

I think a lot of Hollywood could learn from these films. It isn’t a five-star script, but in terms of how to plan, properly pace, choreograph, shoot and edit an action movie, Fallout is hard to beat.

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The moment you heard they were making a Han Solo prequel, what were the five or six things you assumed would feature in that film? Chances are, you thought of the same half dozen things everyone else did…and they’re all present and correct. Problem is, there’s little else of any consequence. It’s a case of ticking those boxes, going through the motions…and at the end of the day, we have fairly serviceable fan fiction.

The good news is the Alden Ehrenreich is strong in the title role. He doesn’t try to impersonate Harrison Ford, instead doing his own spin on the character. There are enough mannerisms here and there, and the script provides enough narrative nods to that which will come after, that the young actor gets the job done. The script doesn’t do justice to the rogue we first met in that Mos Eisley cantina, however. Instead, it’s at pains to tell us that he only thinks he’s a rogue, but deep down is simply too darn nice…

Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton and Emilia Clarke are perfectly fine. There’s nothing memorable about their characters, however. Much like Rogue One, this film can’t compete with the sequel trilogy for new and unique characters to capture the imagination. Donald Glover is fine as a young Lando Calrissian (a spin-off movie starring him could potentially be much more interesting than this) and Paul Bettany does an incredibly good job as the villain with barely any screen time.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s voice work is interesting. She is excellent as the droid L3-37, however the screenplay makes the astonishing mistake of using humour to punch down. The writing here made me feel uncomfortable, and without giving anything away, it felt like a dog whistle for a certain species of Star Wars fan…

John Powell’s score is a misfire for me. There are some interesting themes, but they’re strangely divorced from the action. John Williams’ cues were out of place also.

So what does the film do right? Well, it looks nice, and it does still feel like Star Wars (something all of the new films have succeeded where the prequel trilogy failed.) And I appreciate that we have a plot that isn’t simply rebels-versus-the-Empire. As a side note, it’s weird to think that Star Wars influenced ‘Firefly’, and now we have a Star Wars film that feels a lot like an episode of ‘Firefly’…

The Force Awakens‘ rehashing of that which had come before got a pass because it was an exercise in course-correction. Rogue One and The Last Jedi showed us something new in the Star Wars universe. But Solo has nothing interesting to bring to the table. This is easily the ‘safest’ of the new films, and there’s not much I can say aside from ‘it could have been worse’…

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Ansel Elgort plays Baby, a young getaway driver working for Kevin Spacey’s crime boss, Doc. iPod perpetually playing in his ears, Baby’s as passionate about his music as he is about driving. And Baby Driver opens with an incredible car chase. There’s no denying Wright’s talent behind the camera – such incredibly precise cinematography, editing and music – and whilst we already knew he was great at capturing fight scenes, this is the first time we’ve really seen him let loose on a car chase. Hot Fuzz‘s two-minute chase scene pales in comparison.

Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from that point. For Baby Driver features some of the most generic and clichéd plotting of any film I’ve seen this year. Here’s the crook with the heart of gold, surrounded by tough gangsters. Enter the beautiful damsel, who apparently has nothing going on in her life – she’s just been waiting tables, biding her time for her One True Love to turn up and whisk her away.

And it’s not that any of this doesn’t work. Elgort and Lily James have incredible chemistry. And they’re surrounded by a top-notch ensemble – Spacey, Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm, Jamie Fox, Eiza González and Lanny Joon are all excellent. But none of them can escape the fact that we’ve seen this film 100 times before.

And that’s before I even address the fact that Wright’s script fails to create any unique female characters. James and González are the only women on screen of note, and it’s clear that they conform to the tried-and-true innocent/fallen woman binary. The film features over half a dozen over-the-top gangsters with silly gimmicks, but for some reason Wright didn’t see fit to make any of them female. Most significantly, the entire film hinges on the idea that this young man (boy, really) isn’t the type you’d expect to be a kick-arse getaway driver for a collection of crooks…so why couldn’t this have been a young woman?

Even if that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, I’d be surprised if Baby Driver was impressive enough to be worth your night out. Even the climax doesn’t provide us with the incredible action scene I was hoping for.

Technically speaking, Wright is at the top of his game. This film is constructed with incredible precision, and the direction is on point too. It’s just such a shame it’s wrapped up in such a banal story. Wright needs to really push himself with his next film, perhaps by getting himself a writing partner…

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At the centre of it all is Victoria, played by Laia Costa, a 20-something Spanish woman currently living in Berlin. Out clubbing one night, she meets a group of young men who just want to hang out and have a few drinks. One thing leads to another, and before she realises it, she’s found herself in a life or death situation.

Whilst the quote on the cover may refer to it as an “adrenaline-pumped heist thriller”, be aware that it takes a very long time for this to surface. The film isn’t in a hurry to get to the more extreme moments, so we’re following Victoria and her new friends around the streets of Berlin for quite some time before the second act begins to coalesce. The performances of Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski and others are brilliant, and serve to infuse the film with a sense of documentary realism.

As you can imagine, it’s the cinematographer who is the true star here, and it is only fair that Sturla Brandth Grøvlen gets the first crew credit, even before the director. For two hours and ten minutes, Grøvlen follows the characters around, up staircases, into cars, through crowds. This is Olympic-level cinematography!

Once the “thriller” part of the film kicks in, we’re subjected to some real edge-of-your-seat moments. The screenplay throws obstacles in the way of the characters time and time again, such that you’re really there, with them, in the moment. From what I’ve read online, the script only ran for 12 pages, so the majority of the dialogue is ad-libbed. There are some slow moments – as you can imagine with a single take – but that the film works at all is incredible.

Nils Frahm’s score is the other aspect of Victoria that gets full marks. His instrumental pieces have a soothing yet melancholic feel, and really help give this lumbering epic some structure. At one point, it felt like the music popped up simply to cover for a lame scene, but for the most part the film comes together effortlessly.

Victoria is an exhausting watch, and as such not something I’d throw on again too soon. A technical masterpiece, it’s also a film packed with fierce performances.

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Marvel fatigue is bound to set in someday, but I don’t think this is the problem with Ant-Man. I was quite excited to see a new superhero onscreen after seeing all the other more recognisable faces in multiple films. I also knew very little about the Ant-Man comics, so was excited to see something fresh.

Fresh, this film certainly is not. The film sees ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) recruited by Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the former superhero, albeit a superhero that the world never knew. What follows is standard Marvel fare, except for the fact that it teeters into heist movie territory.

First off, let’s deal with what Ant-Man gets right. As usual, Marvel has done some superb casting, particularly with the supporting players. Michael Douglas is having a fantastic time, and his ever-present voice lends an air of legitimacy to proceedings. Evangeline Lily does a great job, even if her role isn’t as substantive as it should be, whilst Michael Peña frequently steals the show as Scott’s lawbreaking colleague.

Secondly, we have some of the finest VFX I’ve ever seen in a Marvel movie. This is particularly surprising after the slapdash approach of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and perhaps has to do with the fact that such effects-heavy scenes were always going to be a challenge this side of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, so they did their homework first. All the micro-moments utilise the nifty tilt-shift effect (or a digital approximation of it), previously seen in the likes of the rowing regatta scene from The Social Network, and it looks splendid. What’s more, we have a 1987-era Michael Douglas thanks to some digital trickery that was close to perfection; I had no idea what I was watching, all I knew is that it was streets ahead of the digitally youthful Jeff Bridges from TRON: Legacy.

Finally, the action is great. It’s well-staged, shot and edited, and there’s some really original fights on display. Surprisingly, it’s Ant-Man’s sillier powers that yield the most enjoyable scenes. I never thought I’d find a tiny man riding at the head of an ant army that exciting; how wrong I was.

These admirable qualities are overshadowed by a couple of problems, however, the first being Paul Rudd. Now, I’m usually a huge fan of his, and he has the acting chops to create a flawed yet likable leading character, à la I Love You, Man. Here, however, he’s merely present. He looks awkward in practically about every scene, standing there unsure of his purpose. I don’t know if they were aiming for lovable rogue, career criminal desperately trying to go straight or regular joe, but it simply doesn’t work.

Going back to Wright’s departure, there was a lot of people online assuming that he’d had trouble with integrating this film into the MCU, but after seeing the film I wonder if that was really the case. When you consider Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, the thing that ties those three films together is their incredibly flawed protagonists. Watching Ant-Man, I felt that there was a more interesting character lurking beneath (maybe not as extreme as ‘The Irredeemable Ant-Man’, but something similar) and that Marvel wasn’t willing to take that risk. At the end of the day, all we’re left with is a kind-of sort of Howard Stark lite, and he’s too bland to have the movie named after him.

The second, much smaller (heh), problem is that yet again we have a plot concerning mad science being used to create super-soldiers, just like we did in The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Iron Man 1–3.

The major concern with the MCU is that their films can feel homogenised. It helps with regards to quality control, but they also run the risk of being incredibly safe films. Iron Man 3 is the closest that any of the Marvel films got to feeling unique, and with Ant-Man I can’t help but think they’d have been better off retaining the services of Wright. There are half a dozen moments that feel like Wright through and through, but something’s missing. At the end of the day, we have a quality popcorn movie here, just nothing to write home about. (But clearly worth writing 797 words about on your own website.)

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Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) have got a pretty good thing going. As a couple of grifters, they’ve been posing as money lenders, ripping off anyone who comes their way asking for a loan. When they’re caught by FBI agent Richie DiMasio (Bradley Cooper), they’re forced to use their powers for good in order to avoid jail time. What follows is a chaotic and sometimes confusing series of heists, where no one is trustworthy and everyone is out to screw everyone else.

This would be my number one problem with American Hustle: it’s impossible to know where everyone stands. There is not one single sympathetic character, and everyone’s so dishonest that there’s no one to root for. I felt detached for the entire duration, simply watching these reprehensible people lie, cheat and steal their way through the plot.

The art direction, costuming and make-up is glorious. It seems the filmmakers intended to show us just how gross fashions were in the late 1970s, with the hair department making the biggest impact. Once more, Bale seems to have transformed his body, with an unsightly pot belly that hideously complements the most ridiculous comb-over you’ve ever seen.

The performances are decent, however the film is nothing more than an opportunity for each actor to chew the scenery one at a time. Thus Bale, Adams, Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, Louis C.K. and Robert De Niro all get a chance to ham it up. The problem is that the film doesn’t really go anywhere. As a heist flick, the pacing’s all wrong, and the denouement feels unsatisfying simply because you’re left wondering what the point of it all was.

As a comedy, American Hustle is entertaining. It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, even if the narrative lacks purpose. If you enjoyed the zaniness of I Heart Huckabees, then this will probably be down your alley. For everyone else, you may find the badly-paced, uneven storyline a little hard to swallow.

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Despite a rather ugly and poorly filmed opening scene, Get the Gringo soon settles into an interesting narrative as the driver quickly learns about the pecking order in the prison. Whilst I often feel uneasy when Hollywood revels in exaggerating the poverty of the less affluent areas of the world, at the very least this has a real world antecedent with the Bogotan jail featured in the doco ‘A Jail in Colombia’.

Gibson puts on a good show here. The voiceover used throughout the film can be, as is usually the case, superfluous. It doesn’t add much to the storytelling but it doesn’t ruin the film. We learn about the systems in place within the prison at the same time he does, and it’s an original enough setting (outside of science fiction films like Escape From New York) to maintain interest.

The tone of Get the Gringo is a little inconsistent. It’s light hearted and over the top, yet also features moments of sadistic violence. This kind of paradox doesn’t sit well with me. Although ultra violence is often a hallmark of films of this nature, I never particularly liked it when such moments feature in close proximity to comedy (such as Nurse Betty). I’d much prefer that sadistic glee be reserved for straight-faced outings such as the recent Statham film, Safe.

The opening scenes aside, Get the Gringo has a punchy sense of pace and it never gets boring. The visual effects work is underwhelming and the cinematography feels less than polished in general. I don’t have a problem with films shot on formats other than traditional film (such as Paranormal Activity, or indeed Apocalypto), but this regularly shifts from the grainy ‘film’ look to that of video, which can be distracting. The action is well-conceived yet isn’t captured with any visual panache.

An entertaining film with an intriguing setting, the inconsistency in tone was the only element of Get the Gringo that really let me down.

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The setting is the best part of this film. Besnard and his producers clearly had quite a bit of money to splash around. The film boasts some beautifully rich cinematography. Everything is drenched in a golden sheen and the shooting locations certainly drive home the unforgiving nature of the jungle (something from which Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull clearly could have benefitted). The vehicles, the costuming, the sets, the visual effects… all are exemplary.

Such high quality production values can’t distract from the fact that the script is lacking, however. We don’t get a proper introduction to our characters. Well – we get a proper introduction to one of them, the female, who is a late addition to our group of thieves. She used to run a small goldmining operation with her husband before a band of mercenaries attacked the site, leaving her with nothing. This little fact also serves a secondary purpose – to let us know that Canadian Gold, the company that hired the mercenaries, is an Evil Corporation, so it’s all right for our heroes to be stealing their gold. But aside from that, we have nothing. Are these nice people? Do they have altruistic notions, are they greedy or is it a bit of both? How do they know each other? None of these questions are answered.

Christophe Julien’s score is problematic also. It throbs along in a cheesy 70s way, almost as if we’re watching one of the more ridiculous Bond movies. This is completely at odds with the serious tone of the film. That’s not to say the music is bad – it’s great fun – but it would have made more sense to witness some cheesy editing wipes and dissolves, or some sudden zooms and shonky Foley sound effects.

600 Kilos of Pure Gold has its moments, and the quality of the cinematography, excellent locations and admirable production values can’t be denied. It’s just a pity that the script soon has our characters randomly going off the deep end for no explicable reason, as if The Italian Job mutated into Apocalypse Now. It’s a glossy film that fails to live up to its premise.

600 Kilos of Pure Gold is available now on DVD from Madman.

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