When I heard about the sequel to the Chris Hemsworth Netflix movie Extraction, I asked myself one question: “When the hell did the last movie happen?”
Released a month after the whole world shut down due to COVID-19, the 2020 actioner has the man who will forever be known as Thor reuniting with director Sam Hargrave (stunt coordinator for several films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and producers/screenwriters Joe and Anthony Russo (who directed several films in the MCU). In this adaptation of the graphic novel Ciudad, which the Russo brothers co-created, the never-not-buff Australian plays Tyler Rake, an extremely lethal (and extremely tormented) black-ops mercenary who gets dispatched to Bangladesh to extract a drug lord’s son who’s been kidnapped by a rival drug lord. The movie ends (SPOILERS!) with Rake getting shot in the neck, falling off a bridge, and somehow managing to visit the kid several months later.
Extraction 2 shows you what happened during those months. Found washed up ashore, the comatose Rake is sent to a Dubai hospital for recuperation and rehabilitation. His old partners, brother-and-sister mercenaries Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and Yaz (Adam Bessa), set him up in a cabin in the snowy, Austrian woods. (Between this and Jennifer Lopez’s recent The Mother, it seems like all military-trained killers in Netflix movies eventually end up chilling in a snow-covered cabin somewhere.)
His retirement is interrupted by a visit from a mysterious guy (Hemsworth’s former Thor co-star Idris Elba) who comes to him with a job he can’t refuse. He’s to extract a woman (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and her kids from a Georgian prison, where they’re being held captive by her incarcerated husband (Tornike Bziava) – who’s also the brother of Georgia’s most powerful gangster (Tornike Gogrichiani). Why does Rake take this job? She’s also the sister of Rake’s ex-wife (Olga Kurylenko), still hurting from him running off on a mission while their child was dying in a hospital.
The Extraction movies are basically FPS games where you don’t need a controller to get all the kills. With Hemsworth spending a tremendous amount of screen time popping people in the head with his unlimited supply of artillery, these flicks are all about getting you knee deep in the carnage. The first one has a 12-minute sequence — shots were digitally tied together to make it look like it was done in one take — where Hemsworth dodges all kinds of dangerous shit.
Since this is the sequel, there’s another long-take sequence that’s longer and even more insane, complete with Hemsworth’s super-soldier battling inmates during a prison riot, getting in a wild car chase with killers on bikes, and blasting away at helicopters on a runaway train. It’s a bugnuts-crazy 20-or-so minutes. Unfortunately, just like the long-take sequence in the first movie, this sequence happens in the first half. These movies have a tendency to blow their wads way too early.
Both Extractions do attempt to be more than vacuous, high-throttle thrill rides by throwing in some drama in-between the mayhem. This installment really lays on the whole sins-of-the-father subtext (just in time for Father’s Day), with former bad dad Rake going up against a kingpin who was virtually beaten into villany by his abusive old man.
Hemsworth does his damnedest not to be dashing (he fails miserably at that) as the contract killer with a death wish who’s unfortunately too damn good at his job to die, going on an effortless murder spree in order to protect his peoples, which includes a pissant teenage boy (Andro Jafaridze) who would rather be with his vengeful uncle and his crew of killers. Farahani and Bessa’s characters at least have more opportunities to whup some ass alongside the star of the show.
For those who actually saw the first Extraction (if you did, lemme know; I literally know no one who’s seen it), you’ll be pleased to know that the sequel is basically more of the same — a relentless but unsurprising mix of chaos and pathos. And since a third film is most definitely on the way, expect Hemsworth’s sad-sack mercenary to once again get his suicide-mission on.
C+
“Extraction 2” streams Friday on Netflix.
