Back during the summer of 2020 and the Covid Pandemic had us anxious and wanting to get out, Extraction seemed like the perfect action movie. Chris Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, the archetypical soldier-for-hire mercenary who plays by his own rules who isn’t afraid to down a hard drink and do something stupid like jump off a huge cliff into a body of water, just for fun.
The movie was notable for a long 12-minute tracking shot with a lot of action. Who needed to spend $15 on a movie when you could watch it all on your plasma TV? Needless to say, the sequel ups the ante and does a 21-minute tracking shot that begins in a prison escape, through a riot and well, why spoil the fun? Extraction 2 has some great action sequence that make you glad you have your Netflix subscription, even though you may have been questioning it for a while.
Just to get some spoilers out of the way for people who haven’t seen the first one, but Rake is found barely clinging to life after taking multiple shots and falling into a river in Mumbai, India at the end of the first one. He’s taken to a hospital where over an undiclosed period of time, he recovers and goes through physical therapy before being released. His partner, Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani), takes him to a cabin in Austria where he’s expected to retire.
But there are problems. His ex sister-in-law, Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and her two children, Sandro (Andro Japaridze), and Nina (Miriam and Marta Kovziashvili), are in a Georgian prison with her Ketevan’s husband. She is married to Davit Radiani (Tornike Bziava), co-founder of one of the largest crime syndicates, who has arranged for his family to be there in prison. But he’s just had his prison sentence extended. A stranger (Idris Elba) approaches Rake and says his ex-wife, Mia (Olga Kurylenka), has requested he get Ketavan and her children out of there.
Rake recruits Nik and her brother, Yaz (Adam Bessa), to help infilitrate the prison and get them out. And there are a lot of gunfire, explosions, fights, stabbings and so forth along the way. They seem to have a huge financier that requires them to do all this. But these are subtle things no one needs to worry about in a movie where characters are firing guns at each other. Henchmen and goons just seem to show up as Sandro is reluctant to go along and has notified his uncle, Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani), who is a major crime boss.
The script is written by Joe Russo along with his brother, Anthony, and Ande Parks, who originated the first movie’s story and characters in his graphic novel Ciudad. Sam Hargrave returns to direct the movie with the same wham-bam action. I will give him and the filmmakers credit for showing some reality to the movie despite its absurdities. Characters fire semi-automatic rounds like they would normally do in a firefight and grenades only give off minor bursts and explosions, not the fireballs that reach up to the sky we’ve seen in Michael Bay/Joel Silver movies.
The plot doesn’t have that great of a climax as there’s no way to get over the 21-minute sequence earlier in the movie. But you don’t need a lot of huge explosions and people being blown to bits and pieces. Zurab and Davit are your basic Eurotrash crime bosses that calling them one-dimensional would be a compliment. Hemsworth proves why he is one of the best action hero stars.
As for Farahani, she’s a very beautiful woman. So, you can hear some idiot movie executive saying that line from The Player – “Do they screw?” After having seen them in two movies, I think it’s safe to say that Rake and Nik are just friends and work together as mercenaries. When you’re running from henchmen with enough firepower to take over a country, there’s no time to get huggy-buggy lovey-dovey. I think Farahani must’ve gotten a little upset and told the cinematographer to not take too many shots of her from behind like in the first movie.
Also, we must think that Rake may have some feelings for his ex, which is why he takes the job. I actually like this more than the tired generic “He’s the only one for the job” most action movies like this do with the characters. I felt that was the main problem with the first one as Rake came off as more stereotypical. By making it more personal also gives Rake a stronger incentive to save Ketevan, Sandro and Nina from the dangers of the violent crime bosses.
Some criticism of the movie is that it’s like the John Wick movies, which is kinda foolish because most action movies copy from others. I remember when Mission: Impossible 2 came out a year after The Matrix and people compared it unfavorably. Little did they know the Wachowskis were actually using the style formed by the 1980s Hong Kong action movies of Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam and John Woo, who had directed Mission: Impossible 2.
But you could also argue the John Wick movies borrowed from the Jason Bourne movies. It’s not enough nowadays for someone just to shoot a bad guy like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood used to do. No, they got to shoot them as the bad guy stabs them and they do a martial arts move that knocks the knife out of their hand as they shoot some other guy ready to rush the hero who then manages to put the death bullet in the first guy and pull the knife out to stab a third guy who’s rushing after them and shoot a fourth guy who is firing at them. And repeat but this time jumble up the sequence.
If done with good orchestration and editing, it can be effective. Of course, with the movie having been available for about 10 days on Netflix, there is already plans for a third movie. And the ending of Extraction 2 sets it up that way. The only other way to go next is to have a crossover of Extraction, John Wick and Nobody. But let’s keep all three separated, please.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 