Extraction II
The “Extraction” movies, overseen and co-conceived by the Marvel affiliated Russo brothers, are a dying breed among films of this size big budget, super violent adventures. Whether his name is John Rambo or Jason Bourne or John Wick, he’s a variation on a theme the prodigious killer who would rather not kill anymore but keeps getting dragged back into it. He has a haunted past and is sad about it. And he’s played by an actor who seems so fearsome in violent scenes that you’d believe he could take 100 blows to the face, head and torso, plus a knife wound, a gunshot and a grenade concussion and still keep going.
These movies are part of what critic Robert Brian Taylor calls “The Sad Action Hero canon,” with Chris Hemsworth as its most prominent recent entrant, he plays Tyler Rake the name for an action hero that might be chosen by a young boy who doesn’t know any better as someone almost recognizable as human. He is an enormous physical performer, maybe as good as Schwarzenegger or Stallone in their primes but with more range: He has played a scheming male bimbo, a legendary computer hacker, a melancholy mercenary soldier, an 19th-century whaler and cult leader Curtis Hood in “Bad Times at the El Royale,” Thor (of course) all convincingly. There’s also some of young Sean Connery’s self aware swagger there somewhere, but there is also hidden sadness to him that these films bring out.
Tyler used to be an Australian special forces soldier, while his son was dying of some incurable disease (I forget which one), he volunteered for another tour in Afghanistan and wasn’t around when the child died, then his wife left him and he became one of those guys who can’t stop doing dangerous things in extremely dangerous places where danger lurks behind every corner, so he doesn’t have to think about what a terrible mess his life has become. Guilt over wifely and fatherly failure is as much of a driving force in this franchise as amnesia is in the “Bourne” movies and grieving is in the “John Wick” series, Tyler’s adventures are redemption stories set in action movie purgatories filled with shadow versions of the hero defective fathers who mistreat or neglect or warp their children and see them only as extensions of their ego or brand. The real villains here are dark parents who could stand in for Tyler’s own masochistic feelings about how bad a dad he was.
In 2019, the first “Extraction” movie hit Netflix and turned out to be one of the best films of that year. It was a big hit for a good reason; it’s an adrenaline fueled action flick with some of the most audacious stunt work you’ll ever see on screen. I went into this one knowing that no matter how good it might be, it wouldn’t be able to live up to its predecessor. But in that regard, I was wrong. The sequel is better than the first.
That being said, I can’t say that this is a great movie by any means. It’s not even as good as its predecessor. But what it does right, it does very right. In between confusing plot points and odd character choices are some genuinely thrilling action sequences.
The film picks up right where the first one left off Tyler (Chris Hemsworth) has just finished rescuing Ovi Jr, the kidnapped son of an Indian drug lord who was being held in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As he recovers from his injuries at a cabin in the woods (which bears an eerie resemblance to Captain America’s hideout), an unnamed man (Idris Elba) shows up with a message from Tyler’s ex-wife. Her sister and kids are being held in a Georgian prison by her drug dealer husband Davit (Tornike Bziava), who had enough power to get them all locked up with him.
Tyler is once again roped into saving another family from another drug dealer husband who has more power than he should have, surrounded by goons wearing too much body armor. He teams back up with Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and Yaz (Adam Bessa), two characters from the first film whose roles were expanded here but still aren’t given much beyond their initial introductions.
But let’s talk about those three long action sequences I mentioned earlier. I won’t go into detail on what happens or how it all works, but I’ll say this The first one is an uninterrupted 21 minute single take that follows Tyler and the family through a wild prison break and onto a train that’s chased across the tundra by helicopters filled with armed thugs in body armor.
Any thugs who aren’t killed in midair drop onto the train and fight Tyler and his two allies with guns, fists, knives you name it. For over 20 minutes. It’s truly exhilarating stuff to watch, especially when you consider just how much of this was done practically. While many shots were obviously done with CGI (it’s not like they could blow up a real city block), a lot of it is clearly Hemsworth climbing up things and actually fighting people.
But my favorite thing about these sequences is how Sam Hargrave directs them. He understands action geography better than most directors working today he knows where everyone is at all times, where they’re going next and what exactly they’re doing there. This makes for some incredibly satisfying action beats where Tyler takes out multiple bad guys in rapid succession without ever having to look at them.
And while Hargrave sometimes struggles with framing (he loves his Dutch angles) and pacing (the middle section drags quite a bit), he knows enough to get out of the way when something cool is happening on screen. There are no quick cuts here you can see everything that happens during every single punch thrown, every single bullet fired.
The second sequence isn’t as flashy as the first mostly because it’s nearly impossible to top that one but it still packs quite a punch (no pun intended). The third one falls somewhere in between the first two from an intensity standpoint; it isn’t as long as the first but definitely feels longer than the second.
The script doesn’t give its characters much depth beyond their initial introductions, but Hemsworth’s performance as Tyler is still top-notch. He brings the same physicality and charisma that he does to Thor, but with a bit more of an edge. We don’t learn much about his character that we didn’t already know from the first film, but it’s clear that he’s hurting, both physically and emotionally. And while Hemsworth might not be known for his acting range (his other Netflix action movie “Blackhat” is proof enough of that), he proves here that he can do more than just swing a hammer.
Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. It’s not perfect, by any means there are definitely some plot points that left me scratching my head but it knows exactly what it is and doesn’t apologize for it. This is a big, loud action movie meant to be seen on the biggest screen possible, with the biggest sound system possible.
The remaining two great segments of the movie are modeled after the first “Die Hard” and one of John Woo’s classic doppelgängers battle each other movies (probably “The Killer,” which like this film, ends in a candlelit church with doves fluttering about). They’re imaginatively conceived and executed with no fuss virtuosity, but the cutting is at times too frenetic and the camerawork too wobbly (much of the time, Hargrave is doing a modified version of that Russo Bros’ “shaky equals excitement” thing). But they face an odd problem: They’re good enough to anchor just about any other action epic yet feel like a letdown because they come after the jailbreak to railway sequence.
There’s also a subplot about one of the ex-sister in law’s kids, Sandro (Andro Japaridze), who has been trained from birth to be a gangster just like his dad and uncle, supposedly torn between recognizing his family’s multigenerational legacy of violence and brainwashing and choosing to go in a different direction or taking up arms against Tyler to get payback for Tyler killing one of his loved ones during the jailbreak. Anybody who has seen Sad Action Hero movies knows how this part of the story will turn out they’re not going to write out Chris Hemsworth so you play the waiting game.
Hemsworth and his castmates are capable, thoughtful actors. They take this assignment seriously. They dig into Joe Russo’s script’s psychological trauma and guilt aspects, infuse them with a “graphic novel” variant of seriousness (i.e., pulp fiction played solemnly) and elevate “Extraction 2” above glorified video game status. But there isn’t enough dramatic substance in either/or writing or marketplace capped amount of screen time to satisfyingly flesh out Tyler and his immediate circle. The film is single mindedly focused on giving more and more and more bang-bang to the viewers. It wants to be a John le Carré novel and a cinematic equivalent of a shooter game at the same time. The first “Extraction” nearly pulled it off in scenes where Tyler bonded with an old merc buddy played by David Harbour, who was even more cynical than Tyler and turned out to be untrustworthy. It gets close again here in a scene where Tyler faces his deepest regrets in conversation rather than as metaphors while in combat. But for the most part, the series hedges its bets to appeal to what it apparently considers its main audience: viewers who deem anything related to characterization and atmosphere “filler.”
Still, you might appreciate the series’ efforts to root military adjacent shoot-’em-up adventures in something like reality, and give all of its major characters situations to play that are a step above standard action movie tropes. Whereas most contemporary Hollywood movies are aimed at the child in every grownup, the “Extraction” films speak to the potential grownup in every kid, though rated R, its ideal audience might be 12. The scenes between parents and their disappointed offspring capture that feeling you have when you’re young and suddenly realize that the adults you once revered can fail you and are often faking it.
For More Movies Visit Putlocker.