Extraction 2 Review: An Exhausting And Dour Return To The World Of Tyler Rake
In the run-up to the arrival of Netflix's "Extraction 2" much has been made of a 21-minute section of the 2-hour action film that takes place in the course of a "oner," aka a single take. Like many modern oners, the centerpiece of "Extraction 2" (which arrives barely 25 minutes into the affair) is heavily aided by the presence of computer effects. It is a oner in that there are no truly obvious cuts or shifts to a different location or time, but you don't have to be an eagle-eyed viewer to spot the obvious seams no matter how hard director Sam Hargrave tries to make it all seem like it's happening fluidly. What is unavoidable is a palpable sense of exhaustion as a scene that starts with a prison break turns into a sprawling riot, turns into a car chase, then turns into a fight atop a train, and on and on and on. Though this amounts to just one-sixth of "Extraction 2," it feels like the film in microcosm — overly intense and overly exhausting from start to finish.
Considering how Netflix touts that the 2020 film "Extraction" was their highest-watched movie, many may already recall that film concluding with Australian mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) being left for dead after barely succeeding in the mission of extracting and returning a teenage boy to his family in Mumbai. When the sequel begins, Rake is clinging to life and recuperates over the course of the next nine months. By that point, he's well enough to be offered a new job by a mysterious new figure (Idris Elba) to extract a woman (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and her children from a prison that her Georgian husband and his brother (both gangsters, naturally) have placed them in ostensibly for safekeeping. Rake reunites with his old friends Nik and Yaz (Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Bessa, respectively) to pull off the job, but there are naturally many complications, not least of which are the various baddies Rake and the others encounter in the aforementioned oner sequence.
The fairest thing that can be said of "Extraction 2" is that it is very much of a piece with its predecessor. The director is the same, the producing team of Anthony and Joe Russo are here (with Joe as the sole credited screenwriter), and the cast is back too. The movie has the same sense of thematic carryover, as it slowly scratches beyond the surface of Rake's dour exterior to his equally dour interior. For anyone who enjoyed the original, this is a heartening sign, but for those of us who found the original far less compelling and entertaining, this is a similar slog. There is such a thing as a propulsive, intelligently crafted, no-holds-barred, violent action masterpiece centered around a seemingly unkillable man whose mastery of weapons is endless. That, of course, is the "John Wick" series.
This cannot hope to compete.
More of the Same Intense Grimdark Vibe
Hargrave comes from the world of stunt performing, and there's no doubt plenty of stuntwork even amid the CG in "Extraction 2". But the combination of his direction, the cinematography from Greg Baldi, and editing by Alex Rodriguez all imply a lack of trust in actually depicting the action being presented at any given moment. Instead of letting the camera back up to allow the audience to get a clear sense of the spatial choreography of a scene, it mirrors the movement of the characters and creates a visually cacophonous experience instead. If Tyler moves his body to the left to take on a bad guy, the camera often feels the urge to do the same, making it so we're rarely able to have a full view of what's going on. This is why the oner sequence becomes so exhausting, so quickly. It's not just the growing sense that so little of what's depicted in the 21-minute section seems to have occurred practically, it's that the way each beat is staged feels hampered and limited.
Even with the knowledge that "Extraction 2" is in keeping with its predecessor, it's no less frustrating to watch the naturally charismatic and often funny Chris Hemsworth playing a character whose muscles are all very well kept except for those that control his smile. He's agreeably intense and perfectly believable as a guy who can kick ass with no hesitation, but the dial on his acting is set to Grimdark and it's not terribly entertaining to behold. It's not just that Hemsworth is better than this, it's that Hemsworth has proven he can do lighter takes on action fare such as this ... in the Marvel movies whose success enabled the Russos to even make this movie with Netflix. (Elba, to note, is barely in "Extraction 2", but he is the only actor allowed to show off a personality here and winds up being the most enjoyable performer, even if it amounts to a warped "Thor" reunion. Funny how that works!)
Of course, many of Netflix's original films are all but pre-built via algorithm to align with what audiences are expected to like. And seeing as the first "Extraction" was — as noted above — immensely popular based on the same algorithm, it tracks that they wouldn't mess with the formula for the sequel. So whether or not the movie is any good, it is safe to say that if you liked the first one and what it had to offer, the second will not surprise you. That doesn't make "Extraction 2" any good, though; it just makes it predictable. It's a fine distillation of the Netflix formula, but they've rarely figured out how to make these things entertaining as opposed to just safe.
/Film Rating: 3.5 out of 10