Extraction 2 review: Chris Hemsworth returns for another nonstop action fest
Netflix somehow resurrects Hemsworth's Tyler Rake for another onslaught of mayhem that doesn't disappoint
Film Reviews Chris Hemsworth
In Extraction 2, Chris Hemsworth (best known as Thor) returns as Tyler Rake, a hunky, tough dentist facing an amazingly recalcitrant tooth upon whose removal the life of a family depends.
Er … no … actually. Just kidding. In Extraction 2—a nearly nonstop action fest, Hemsworth returns as Tyler Rake, a hunky, tough soldier of fortune, facing a mission upon which the life of a family depends. This may come as a surprise to fans of the first Extraction, since it ended with Tyler taking a bullet in his neck and falling off a bridge deep down into a river, seeming quite definitively dead.
But the original’s huge streaming success on Netflix—reportedly the service’s most-watched original production up to that point—mandated a resurrection. So director Sam Hargrave and writer Joe Russo start the new entry with a reprise of the “death” scene, followed by Tyler washing up ashore and miraculously being revived by a team of medics. To be fair, he is very much the worse for wear, spending months in the hospital and rehab: this gives the story what, in this genre, passes for at least a touch of realism.
It also means that—unlike Extraction, which was more or less all action from scene one—the sequel takes a little longer to gear up into a similar onslaught of action scenes.
Tyler’s faithful boss, Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani), sets him up with a nice retirement cabin in rural Austria, where he seems mildly content with his dog, a laptop, and a big screen TV. She also brings him all his personal belongings—which amount to a shoe box of memorabilia of his ex-wife (Olga Kurylenko) and his son, who died of leukemia at six. Tyler was off fighting in Afghanistan at the time—an abandonment leading to guilt feelings about his past.
After an indeterminate period of time, Tyler is contacted by the mysterious Alcott (Idris Elba), who wants him to unretire. Elba’s two scenes total less than five minutes, which makes sense since, as always, he dominates the screen to a degree that Hemsworth can only dream of. Given Tyler’s diminished condition, he rebuffs the offer of a new mission … until Alcott releases a zinger: this mission involves the Tyler’s ex-wife’s sister, Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and her two kids, who are being held in a Georgian prison. Seems that Ketevan’s husband, a mobster, doesn’t have enough juice to get out of jail, but does have enough to arrange for his family to be held there with him.
Talk about upping the stakes: in the first film, Tyler had to rescue the kidnapped son of a crime boss; this time, it’s the son and the daughter and the wife of a crime boss. Plus: now he’s working without Nik and the rest of his team (at least at first).
In terms of action and pacing, the new film isn’t quite as relentless as its predecessor. While the latter was essentially one long chase, Extraction 2 actually has three discrete acts. The prison breakout runs about a half hour, after which Tyler and his in-laws seem safe in a Viennese hospital, where the 5-year-old daughter is being treated for minor injuries.
But thanks to someone’s loose lips, Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani), the brother/partner of the Georgian mob boss—seeking revenge for the death of Ketevan’s husband during the prison fracas—locates them. But, before Tyler and the rescued family can even finish the pastries that apparently make up the entirety of Viennese hospital food, there are helicopters filled with evildoers shooting through the windows. Luckily, Nik and the team have arrived on the scene as well.
The Vienna escape is another half hour of mayhem, during which roughly half of the local police force is wiped out. Why the Austrian military never shows up remains a mystery. And the final act has Tyler and Nik taking on Zurab’s remaining men and eventually Zurab himself.
As in Extraction, the action sequences are the whole game here, and they do not disappoint. There’s a helicopter landing on a train, lengthy car chases, some North By Northwest-inspired dangling from a ledge, and innumerable room-full-of-killers mano a mano fight scenes.
Most of these are done in what appear to be impossibly long single shots. The prior film had an 11-minute take; this time, one shot nearly doubles that. To the filmmakers’ credit, they admit that they used some editing trickery to achieve that effect. But these sequences are nonetheless truly impressive; you watch in amazement as the complicated fight choreography, involving dozens of stunt men and hundreds of gunshots and explosions, goes on and on.
The whole business with Tyler’s family—only hinted at in Extraction—gives the movie a little more emotional oomph, but make no mistake. This is still almost all action. And it goes without saying that, if you have any squeamishness about violence, this is definitely not for you.
36 Comments
I see very little about dentistry in the trailers. I think this film may be poorly-titled.
Extraction 3: Maximum Overbite
Extr4ction: Nitrous.This will be the inevitable Fast & Furious crossover, except instead of ricers and seppo pony cars, Hemmo will fang around in a HQ Monaro.
Neck: ShotRiver: Fell intoHair: Not mussed even slightly
He was dragged backwards through a hedge filled with hair wax and moisturiser.
He had to come back because that bastard Roberts-Smith named him in the trial.
It’s a change to see the years into the apocalypse and yet every morning I wake up with my hair looking like a shampoo model aesthetic applied to a male character for once.
No mention of the fact that the first film sucked, despite even this site giving it the middling “C” it deserved?
Counterpoint: https://www.avclub.com/action-fans-everywhere-got-their-quarantine-fix-with-th-1845849382
I’d say it didn’t suck, as a “C” grade indicates it’s nothing special. I’d concur with that assessment but my wife and I still had a good time watching the film.
I gave up halfway through. I love long tracking shots but not when they are manipulated to hell and back like in Extraction. Like if you got to stitch it all together with bad CGI maybe just make a cut?
I enjoyed it on the whole — not amazing, the story was pretty much by the numbers, but the action was nicely brutal and much better staged than most Hollywood productions (for the most part).But you’re completely right about the tracking shots. Some of the joins were so bad that I don’t know why they bothered, and sequences made less geographical sense because of them joining stuff unnecessarily. The genuine long takes within it was well done, but they should’ve just let it break up into a series of still impressive 2-3 minute takes instead of turning it into a single badly stitched together 11 minute one.I am kind of curious to see if they’ve managed to hide the joins better this time.
“We can use technology to compensate for lack of artistry!” – the techbros running Netflix
Enough people watched it to warrant a sequel, the only metric that matters.
I liked it, as good as I think a Netflix action movie could possibly be.
Let me tell you a myth of a man who once worked here named A.A. Dowd…. he used to know what letter grades meant and he would infamously give out a “C-”. If you were to check the median between A and F that is the letter C. The schooling system has trained our minds to consider “C” as bad because less than half (or even %60) in school is considered lousy.
However, the mythical, long forgotten, A.A. Dowd used to seem to believe a C grade meant something was average, because the letter C is means AVERAGE. Instead of “C = bad”. So chill the fuck out brother.
Just a tangent: as a Brazilian I’ve never understood the American scoring system of “A to F”… In Brazil is “A to E”, where C is the medium, meaning “average” (just enough), and then we have two grades above average (“B” meaning good/very good, and “A” meaning excellent/perfect) and two grades below average (“D” meaning bad/very bad, and “E” meaning terrible/complete failure). Mathematically it makes perfect sense. The “F” seems complete unnecessary if “C” is the medium, and creates an uneven scale.
The first film wasn’t great, but it did its job and provided some mindless escapist action. That’s ok sometimes. The new film is more of the same but with better execution.
Am I going crazy? I could have sworn the first one ended with the barely-but-not-really-ambiguous reveal that he was alive, like he was behind the kid but out of focus or something, but I keep reading all these references to him dying at the end.
You’re not crazy. They heavily telegraphed that he survived at the end.
The first one was dumb fun. I enjoyed it and thought the action scenes were very well done! Though, I remember my wife and I kind of laughing ruefully at the first big fight scene between Thor and a bunch of bad guys in a single room. I don’t recall what country the movie took place in, but it was kind of insane as this HUGE white dude just brutally slaughters a crowd of tiny brown men with his hands. My wife was like, “He is twice their size! It’s like a racist fight with a crowd of children.”
Not that I thought Extraction was a can’t-miss movie, but I did watch it. In the last scene the kid is home safe swimming in his pool, and in the background a figure appears. He’s far away and all but it’s for sure supposed to be the Hemsworth character.And yeah, he was shot in the neck or head and fell like a thousand miles, but… he’s a tough mercenary dude with a heart of gold.
I don’t recall that, but, if I *did* notice, I’d have assumed he was a ghost.
Extraction meets Sixth Sense.‘I see dead people…lots and lots of dead people…and it was me who killed ‘em.’
I assume pretty much anyone I see that isn’t within speaking range of me is a ghost. It’s just easier. Then I don’t get spooked when they get closer and they’re all half-visible and rattling chains and such
Yeah, my recollection from the first one is that the ending heavily foreshadowed his survival for a sequel.
Even Charles Dickens would be like “Tyler Rake? C’mon mate, try and be a little more creative.”
“Call him Spongelworth Himbodump”
There’s only one Aussie rake I recognise:
I’m pretty sure I watched the first Extraction, but I literally have no memory about it.
Same. Well, I do know for sure I watched it, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you anything specific about it. A very “generic action Netflix algorithm” movie.
She also brings him all his personal belongings—which amount to a shoe box of memorabilia of his ex-wife (Olga Kurylenko) and his son, who died of leukemia at six.I definitely read this as they brought him a box with his dead kid in it.
he was a tiny tiny boy to be fair
Those are honestly impressive-looking action scenes in the trailer.And some of them do look like video trickery was involved.Still: not snobby, would watch.
I don’t understand some of the comments here. This is an action film and imo should be judged by the conventions of an action film, for which this is pretty good as far as Hollywood films go (including the original). I had fun and saw stuff blow up, people beat up, shot etc real good, which is very hard to do even if snobs feel its easy and not FILM making.
“seeming quite definitively dead.”Have you never ever ever watched a movie before?Talk about not understanding basic rules of cinema and story telling. During the opening scene in Extraction, Rake drops into the water from high cliff and sits on the lake bed. It is not a coincidence that at the end of the film he drops into water from a high bridge and disappears. This was a clear choice by the filmmaker to let us know the character does not die. Then there’s that whole sitting by the pool scene at the end.Did you actually pay attention when you watched the first film?