One of the things I miss most about my childhood is being able to enjoy movies that were kind of bad. Steven Seagal vehicles come to mind, but there were lots of others. Movies that weren’t good, exactly, and clearly hadn’t cost a lot to make, but nonetheless had a certain dynamism and visceral thump. They had grit before “gritty” meant a steroidal Batman.
Upgrade is a throwback to those movies, a sort of schlock action sci-fi thriller that’s heavy on the viscera and light on the introspection. Written and directed by Australian Leigh Whannell, who helped write the original Saw short with James Wan, it stars Prometheus’s Logan Marshall-Green as “Grey Trace,” a beardy mechanic who makes a living restoring classic muscle cars even though it’s the future.