This film is basically "Robocop" meets "Death Wish", with less satire than the former and more humor than the latter. And it's a B movie blast. An unrelenting pace, fantastic fight choreography that doesn't skimp on the gleeful blood and gore, and never not fun or interesting to look at.

Yeah some of the one-liner dialogue as delivered by Logan Marshall-Green feels a bit forced and the plot isn't exactly clever or unique, but damn it, it all works and it makes it's own beautiful alchemy out of a bunch of borrowed parts. This is cheap genre filmmaking done right.

Upgrade sees writer and director Leigh Whannell moving away from horror to low budget futuristic sci fi action thriller.

Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is an old fashioned car mechanic who has little to do with self navigating cars with AI. After he delivers a refurbished car to tech wizard Eron Keen, he is involved in a car accident where he is paralysed by a gang and his wife is killed.

Now paralysed for life, Keen offers Grey a chance to walk again by embedding an advanced chip fused to his spinal cord.

Not only can Grey walk, the chip communicates with him allowing Grey to track down the people who killed his wife. The chip has given Grey increased strength and speed.

This is a no frills entertaining B film. There is a lot of Ex-Machina in the underlying plot but it also as hints of Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Six Million Dollar Man and even John Wick as Grey is out for revenge.

It helps that Marshall-Green has more than a passing resemblance to Tom Hardy.

I admit to enjoying UPGRADE, a simple science fiction-oriented twist on the usual revenge storyline. I'll say straight away that the plot is nothing special and has been done plenty of times before; it's the use of familiar but new technology that makes this interesting. The identity of the villains and the supporting characters are quite perfunctory, but the direction is inventive and the film particularly shines in the action scenes, so much so that you wish there were more of them. The main actor commits to his part quite neatly and there are enough decent set-pieces to make this an enjoyable watch, more so than plenty of bigger-budgeted fare.