6 Underground: This Michael Bay adventure-thriller is presently on Netflix. It was released back in 2019. Funny that it didn’t register with me five years ago. It seems to me that someone approached Michael Bay after seeing the success of the Mission Impossible movies (at that time there had been six released) and had made oodles of money. For this movie, the idea was to create a team of randomly skilled people and have them “dead” so that they are truly off the grid. They are not beholden to any government, but rather can choose to engage in dealing with problems as they identify them, in short they get to kill the “bad people” without worrying about treaties, ancillary world views and political fallout. They number each other for anonymity with Ryan Reynolds playing a billionaire tech guru known as One. This is how this operation is funded; never mind questions about getting cars, flights, purchasing anything or getting into any country without documents. But nevermind.

The true inspiration for me watching this was a longtime buddy of mine saying that the car chase through Florence was one of the most epic that he has ever seen. I was intrigued. I also know that Bond, Bourne and Mission Impossible had done respectively some impressive car chase sequences (quite a few in various Italian cities). The car chase in this movie was certainly on that level and one has to be impressed with the handling of the Alfa Romeo Quadrafoglio painted neon green zooming through the streets with two team members doing a medical procedure in the back seat! Yea! It is another level.

Bay knows how to “blow things up, real good” (borrowing heavily from departed Jim Flaherty and John SCTV) with many vespa riders getting the brunt of the damage. Let’s just say a crowded street in Florence during the day would have its fair share of collateral damage. But after the dust settles, some new members of the team arrive and show their skills, it becomes very reminiscent of other movies (like The Dark Knight and the extraction scene from Hong Kong). It is almost always feeling like a Call of Duty video game as the team enters into a new area. They are targeting a foul, ill tempered leader of a made up country for plot purposes. The writers try and inject heart into this team of strangers who One insists are NOT a family. They are focused on the mission at hand, and the individual takes second billing in order to meet the objective. I liked the car chase. I cannot recommend more than that. There are some typical Ryan Reynolds quips, some of which land for a laugh, but generally this $150M budget film (second highest in Netflix history) didn’t do well likely because it didn’t resonate with the audience in the same way emotionally than the other thrillers noted above. Some of the other team members have interesting stories and skills, but it once again seems forced. So for me, this is a pass.

Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies and Scandal: This three part documentary on Netflix tells the story of the earlier days of extra-marital affair Canadian company Ashley Madison and the fall out from the targeted hack that took place with them in July 2015 where they were boasting 37 million users worldwide. The exposure of the details of the customers, and later the details of personal emails of the CEO and others was a major wake up call for people generally and how much information that they wish to share with any website. The website turns out faked their cybersecurity protection system and it’s safety with sensitive data, and you learn how a person managed to get behind the firewall and put the company up for a ransom demand.

Interestingly, the demand was to shut down the site immediately and the hacker(s) will not proceed in disclosing the names and emails of the customers. The series brings forward a number of couples and those who were impacted by all of this. The insiders, who focused on the dollars and cents and wanting to go public on the stock market, to the users who had their names published. The more well known you were, like the couple pictured above who were well-known Christian Youtubers and Vloggers had their world turned upside down. Is this a call for sympathy? Many would say no. Show the cheaters for who they are. Others are more wary about those judging others and perhaps “those without sin should cast the first stone”. None of those involved on the company side are likeable. Some of the innocents caught unaware, were extremely sympathetic. The ongoing lesson is though that a business that professes to be 100% protected in this cyberworld, is just a hack away from this not being true. This was interesting.