Upgrade has glimpses of brilliance but ultimately falls short

UPGRADE is a slick, low-budget offering that shows glimpses of brilliance but ultimately loses itself and falls short of the mark.

THOUGH very slickly executed for a low-budget production, Upgrade continually loses itself in thematic and creative no-man’s-lands.

There are just enough bright ideas glowing from afar to have you urging the movie to seize on them, expand upon them, and quickly find its way out.

Sadly, this never comes to pass. After a while, it dawns on you that Upgrade is quite happy keeping its distance, and amusing itself.

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Logan Marshall-Green plays the hero in Upgrade, Grey Trace.

A banal and all-too-familiar story is set in a near-future where technology has come a long way, fast.

We’re not just talking self-driving cars and virtual assistants. There is now an implant prototype that can serve as a complete operating system for the human body.

Known as STEM, this nascent tech may have some wonky ethical-judgment bugs in its coding, which could prove both a help and a hindrance to Upgrade’s hero, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green).

Upgrade continually loses itself in thematic and creative no-man’s-lands.

Grey looks a bit like Tom Hardy, is out to avenge the death of a beloved wife, and has lots of strained conversations with STEM, a digital smart-alec who gets too many lines and gets on your nerves.

It must be said the physical action sequences in Upgrade are packing a certain something that often borders on truly brilliant.

Once you glean that Grey is a passenger in his own body as it moves and mauls with kinetic precision, the choreography, editing and camera work are working together impressively as one.

But Upgrade continually won’t double-down on its killer stuff, yet will always double back for more filler stuff.

UPGRADE (MA15+)

Rating: Two stars (2 out of 5)

Director: Leigh Whannell (Insidious: Chapter 3)

Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson, Christopher Kirby, Simon Maiden, Benedict Hardie, Melanie Vallejo, Richard Cawthorne, Clayton Jacobson.

Slack to the future

Originally published as Upgrade has glimpses of brilliance but ultimately falls short