Extraction 2 Follows The First Film's Footsteps, Using Gardening Tools For The Worst
This post contains spoilers for "Extraction 2."
There's a long history of action movies trying to inject some cursory emotional drama, usually "fridging" the hero's wife or kid to provide motivation and elicit some feeling among viewers. John Wick's wife and dog might be the ultimate example of recent years. But whereas the "John Wick" filmmakers recognized that over-the-top action was their main selling point and doubled down on that aspect with every entry in the franchise, "Extraction" and "Extraction 2" use large amounts of their runtime to indulge in the main character's emotional trauma.
That character is Tyler Rake — one of the most obviously ridiculous names for an action hero of all time. Tyler Rake is very upset because he lost his son to leukemia and his wife left him. But instead of the wife and son being a brief reference point used to propel Rake on his violent missions, both "Extraction" and the sequel spend a lot of time trying to wring some emotion from Rake's ongoing grief, seemingly trying to pass themselves off as serious explorations of the harrowing experience of losing a loved one. The rest of the time, Tyler Rake kills people with gardening tools.
And while I'd hoped "Extraction 2" would pull a "John Wick: Chapter 2" and just go all in on the action, it seems writer Joe Russo was intent on reminding us that Tyler Rake is a haunted, tortured man, who spends his days watching videos of his wife and son skipping around on what is presumably the same beach on which all action heroes envision their dead wives cavorting in flashbacks. Luckily, for those who enjoy horticultural tool murder, however, Russo and director Sam Hargrave also added a lot more of that for the sequel.
Bring on the rake death
In "Extraction," black market mercenary Tyler Rake is tasked with extracting Ovi Jr., the kidnapped son of an Indian drug lord, from Dhaka. But before he can escape the Bangladeshi capital, he must, of course, punch a lot of men. And at one point he comes across a conveniently placed garden rake which he jams into the neck of one foe, before forcing another's eyeballs directly onto the spikes of the implement.
Speaking to Men's Health, Sam Hargrave revealed that the rake kills weren't in the script, explaining that there was an "early comment online" that said something like, "If Tyler Rake uses a rake to kill somebody, I'm going to lose my mind." And so, the rake kills were added on the fly, making for an oddly gruesome tongue-in-cheek moment.
With "Extraction 2," Hargrave seems to have ramped things up, with a 21-minute "one take" sequence that saw Chris Hemsworth actually set on fire. And if you're going to ramp things up, you might as well go all in on rake death, which is exactly what Hargrave and co. have done.
The very first kill in "Extraction 2" is carried out by Georgian gangster Zurab Radiani (Tornike Gogrichiani), who's not very happy that his brother's prison sentence got extended by 10 years, and shows his dissatisfaction by shoving a rake through the neck of the Governor that supported it. From there things just go wild, gardening tools death-wise. Hargrave has expanded the implements his cast gets to use this time, with both Rake and the person he's saving, Ketevan Radiani (Tinatin Dalakishvili), whacking tracksuited Georgian convicts with shovels as they fight their way out of prison. And there's more...
You can't rake-murder your way to a good movie
There's plenty more gardening-related violence in "Extraction 2," with Sam Hargrave making a point of focusing on various shovels and other implements as assorted foes attempt to use them on Tyler Rake, and vice versa. Prior to the prison yard brawl, for instance, Ketevan's abusive husband and Zurab's brother Davit (Tornike Bziava) tries to hit Rake with a shovel, before the merc-for-hire breaks his hand and uses the shovel in question to slash Davit's neck open. Oh, and then Ketevan hits him with an even bigger shovel to finish the job. In other words, Hargrave uses the whole death-by-trowel overkill to convey a larger point about how he's attempted to top the first movie, action-wise.
Which he might well have done. The 21-minute oner is an impressive feat, even while the action tends to become less impactful with every minute that passes. Not necessarily because it gets worse, but just because there's so much of it that you can feel yourself zoning out, all the way up to the point where Rake has to fend off an attack by bow saw, before slamming some nails into poor old Zurab during the final fight.
There's also the issue of just what this film is trying to be. Rake deaths are great if you're not going to pretend the rest of the film is a sobering look at the effects of grief. Unfortunately, that's not quite what happens with "Extraction 2." Still, just like the first one, it's not without its charms. And given Hargrave plans to make a Tyler Rake trilogy, it'll be interesting to see what kind of gardening-related savagery he comes up with for the next one.