Julien Neaves – Editor
An action movie starring Chris “Thor” Hemsworth, written by Joe Russo (half of the Russo Bros. directing team behind Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame) and directed by Sam Hargrove, the stunt coordinator for three of the four Avengers films? Well colour me intrigued!
Netflix action film Extraction stars Hemsworth as burnt out Australian black market mercenary Tyler Rake who gets a job to rescue an imprisoned drug lord’s son (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) from a rival drug lord in Bangladesh. Here is my spoiler-free Quick Bite review:
There are some action movies that leave you still hungry for bullets and beat downs when the end credits begin to roll. Well Extraction is a five course meal of exquisitely shot and choreographed action sequences that will leave you completely sated. There are lots and lots of firefights, some brutal close quarters fights and one adrenaline-pumping car chase. This is no shaky cam, disorienting action but steady, focused scenes. There is also frequent use of continuous shots that make the gunplay even more thrilling and will have you wondering: “How the heck did they film that!”
When the bullets aren’t flying and Hemsworth isn’t a beautiful murder machine he does a solid job as the tortured merc and gets some dramatic acting in during his scenes with Jaiswal (a breakout performance from the young actor) and Stranger Things’ David Harbour as former merc Gaspar. I saw a review saying the film lacked heart but I don’t know if they were expecting Terms of Endearment. I was fine with what I got.
I will, however, knock off a point for the film falling back on a number of action movie tropes though the unique setting of Bangladesh was refreshing. But it does everything else so well that I gorged myself for the almost two-hour runtime and was left wanting a prequel, sequel, side-quel, whatever. Extraction pulls out all the stops (you see what I did there and you liked it) to deliver one of the best modern action movies.
Score: 9 out of 10
For my Quick Bite review of Code 8 you can click here.