'Extraction' Review—An Action-Packed Blast

I feel like this movie was made when some guy pitched the idea of having an action hero named Tyler Rake, who kills someone with...you guessed it, a rake!

Stuntman-turned-director Sam Hargrave directs Extraction, an action thriller starring Chris Hemsworth as a black market mercenary who rescues the kidnapped son of a drug lord and goes on the run with him as bad guys chase them in a Bayhem-esque series of explosions, gunfire, and blood.

How do I describe Extraction? Extraction is precisely what you would expect a movie like Extraction to be. It does a little more than it should and a little less than it should, and the product is a B-movie screenplay with A-movie direction.

There is no denying the jaw-dropping direction of the film's action sequences. Hargrave's background in stuntwork is evident in the way he helms these sequences of violence. The hand-to-hand combat is very well-choreographed, and the most surprising aspect of this film is its use of long takes.

You first take notice of it in a car chase when the camera which appeared to be attached to a vehicle enters the window of the car our characters are in, seamlessly transforming into a "French over" before exiting the car again.

And just in case you didn't have enough, we later have an 11-minute continuous shot which follows Rake in action, as he shoots bad guys, falls off a building, gets into a knife fight, and jumps out of a moving truck. Eagle-eyed viewers may notice the sneakily hidden cuts in the sequence, but in terms of action, this oner is an all-timer.

However, when I wrote this was a B-movie script, I meant it. This screenplay from Joe Russo (co-director of Avengers: Endgame) felt as if it belonged to a direct-to-VOD action film starring post-2012 Bruce Willis. To my surprise, when I sloppily jotted down this observation, I was unaware that Willis was, in fact, in a 2015 direct-to-VOD action film, also titled Extraction.

Had the Russo brothers not been attached as producers, a script such as this would have been given to a 21st-century Jean-Claude Van Damme film. In terms of the film's characterization and plot, this movie is quite weak.

Rake's character development is through brief flashbacks and a scene where he narrates his obligatory sad backstory, complete with the "I'm not a hero" monologue. Rake is accompanied by Ovi, a young boy whose father is a crime lord.

Ovi is not an interesting character; he has brief moments where he talks about his life and relationship with his father, but these moments are few and far between. Furthermore, this film lacks any one villain, and we instead get a conveyor belt of faceless bad guys for Rake to shoot.

The villains in this movie are mostly a bunch of evil guys, but this is a film that focuses more on shootouts than showing us the motivation for the villains and giving them a more substantial presence besides a bunch of people (and some kids) who fight Rake.

Hemsworth is always a likable presence in films, but he doesn't get the opportunity to show much of his charm in this somber role that doesn't explore his character's dark roots as well as it should. It felt as if anyone could have played this character, but he does a great job with what he has, doing many of the stunts himself.

Also, the film's plot is quite thin. It lacks anything unique, and it is quite clear that Russo wanted the action to drive the movie forward, not the story or characters. It knows exactly what type of film it is, and it does not try to reach any higher heights than that.

Overall, this movie is an action-packed blast. It's a very violent, dark film that isn't intended to be quite as fun as John Wick but has many entertaining sequences. Armed with a yellowish color palette and a whole lot of bullets, Extraction is not one of the better films in its genre but serves as mildly enjoyable escapism.

Grade: ★★★✬☆ [7/10, B-]