The trailers for “6 Underground” made it look like a fun action-comedy romp with Ryan Reynolds’ quick-fire humor paired against Michael Bay’s over-the-top action. What could go wrong? Plenty. First, Reynolds is basically regurgitating his Deadpool act – but without the costume and without the fantasy world of superheroes. We’re supposed to believe that this crude, rich man who leaves his team members behind to die can receive loyalty from former assassins and special-ops soldiers because he’s paying them buckets of money. It doesn’t work without the red and black spandex. Second, regarding Michael Bay’s directing style: I enjoyed a couple of the Transformers movies, “Pearl Harbor,” “The Rock” – and “The Island” is one of my favorite SF/action movies. This one, however, is so sloppily strung together with flashbacks and flash-forwards and maybe even a flash-sideways as to make the story almost incomprehensible – not that it matters much because we’re too busy watching bullets fly and intestines fly and eyeballs fly to really not care much what the plot might be. All of those bodies and body parts, however, get to a real problem with the overall tone of the entire film: Life is treated as something incredibly cheap by everyone in the movie. Not just by the bad guys, but by the good guys too. People are shot, run over, thrown off buildings, drowned, squashed, and maimed – all in glorious slow-mo so we can absorb every last moment of their fear and panic before they go SPLAT. (Although a few puppies at the very beginning of the movie are miraculously spared any of that – leaving me to understand from this film’s perspective that animals’ lives are worth more than people’s lives. Thanks for that.) Regarding Bechdels, it hardly matters because every woman on screen, from the main characters to the extras, is dressed in the tightest, most revealing outfit and shot from whatever camera angle will most highlight her chest, legs, or butt. Overall it’s a confusing mess of a film that cheapens the value of life, lets us know that the sexiest women are those that shoot us between the eyes, and propagates the worst stereotypes about life in the Middle East - but don’t worry, because a team of six US mercenaries is perfectly capable of toppling any foreign government with a smile, a wink, and a quip.