Upgrade Needs Little Improvement

Upgrade (2018)

Upgrade was a pretty wild ride. It was essentially a Black Mirror episode about revenge. On its surface, it was just a movie where knockoff Tom Hardy gets a Hexbug put on his brain stem by knockoff Harry Styles and then goes on a revenge spree. It has about ten minutes of exposition and then jumps right in, which is totally my speed. It was a brisk 95 minutes with no side stories, no depth in secondary characters, and plenty of violence. It had zero actors that people know but still provided an entertaining and relatively fresh story. The revenge framework was cut and paste, but the nuances and action were new and meshed smoothly with the paint by numbers vengeance. It won't win any Oscars, but it was a great summer popcorn flick if you want to turn your brain off and watch some hardcore action. It does ramp up at the end, but I don't want to spoil anything. Overall, I give Upgrade 3 out of 4 near decapitations.