The first Extraction film was an interesting animal. Back then, I rarely watched made-for-Netflix movies, unless they happened to also run in theaters, which was rare when this film was released. But the pandemic changed all of that, and it just so happens that I dropped in on the streamer in April 2020, when folks were stuck in their homes and just beginning to realize that this COVID-19 business wasn’t going away as quickly as some would have us believe. Still, for reasons I can’t fully explain or remember, I never did get around to watching the film, despite its pedigree. It starred Chris Hemsworth in an brutal, full-bore action movie directed by Sam Hargrave, produced by Marvel’s golden directing team of Joe and Anthony Russo (Joe wrote the screenplay as well), and it was based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks.
So it wasn’t until about a week ago, knowing that Extraction 2 was on the horizon, that I finally watched the first film, known primarily for an extended action sequence that appears to go on for something like 10-12 minutes with no visible editing (there is plenty of invisible editing however). Honestly, aside from that sequence, Extraction is a fairly standard-issue actioner with lots of shooting, exploding, chasing, crashing, punching, and the slightest hint of character development, as we learn Hemsworth’s Australian black ops mercenary Tyler Rake is willing to risk it all and go off-mission when there’s a child in danger because at some point in his past, he lost his own child to illness.
This go-round, Rake is somehow brought back from the brink of death at the end of the last movie and pushed into early retirement by his handler Nik Khan (the returning Golshifteh Farahani), who gives him a remote cabin in the snowy woods somewhere, where he’s told he should live out his days peacefully. Before long, however, a mysterious representative (Idris Elba) shows up at his door at the behest of Rake’s ex-wife Mia (Olga Kurylenko), whose sister (Tinatin Dalakishvili) is married to a Georgian gangster and is being held (with their two children) in the same prison as her husband. Mia wants Tyler to come out of retirement and extract the whole family (minus the husband) from the prison. Once the extraction is complete, the gangster’s brother, Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani), makes it his life’s mission to hunt down Tyler to kill him and the sister for taking his family away from him.
Once again, the actual extraction sequence appears to be one very long take, even longer than the one in the first film, and the action is seriously impressive, so much so that it hurts to even watch at times. Hemsworth’s body takes abuse that makes his survival skills equal to that of his superhero counterpart. But I especially like that this time around Nik and her sidekick Yaz (Adam Bessa, also returning from the first film) get in on a great deal of the pounding, explosive action. The bad guys are easy to despise, especially as they manipulate the sister’s son Sandro (Andro Jafaridze), who is weak but wants to prove himself tough by aligning himself with his villainous uncle.
With Hargrave back behind the camera once again, Extraction 2 makes more of an effort to tease us that more installments in Rake’s adventures could be on the horizon, including a big tease that Elba’s regular employer is someone quite interesting. We get a bit more backstory into Rake’s emotionally frozen state once Mia actually enters late in the film, and that helps make this sequel more emotionally solid. Rake still wants to help kids, but helping keep a family together in the process seems like a dream gig for him, especially if it means that his wife may forgive him for being on a mission when their child died. Extraction 2 is a tad bit better than the first, so hopefully the filmmaking team rides that momentum for whatever comes next and gives us something that borders on great.
The film begins streaming on Netflix on June 16.
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