Film Review - Extraction (18)

A hardened mercenary's mission becomes a soul-searching race to survive when he's sent into Bangladesh to rescue a drug lord's kidnapped son.

(Summary courtesy of Netflix)

In a shift away from the licensing model that built the company, Netflix has been spending billions of dollars on it's own creative and is drawing some of the biggest names across TV and film to do it. Whilst there's no doubt in their ambition or production quality, the overall results have been largely mixed so far; from Oscar nominees like "Marriage Story" (dir. Noah Baumach, starring Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Adam Driver) and “The Irishman" (dir. Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino) to the critically panned "6 Underground" (dir. Michael Bay, starring Ryan Reynolds). But they’re starting to hit more than they miss and this is definitely the case with "Extraction".

Based on the graphic novel "Ciudad", "Extraction" stars Chris Hemsworth fresh off the monster success of last years "Avengers: Endgame", but that's only the beginning of the Marvel Studios connection. The film is one of the first produced by AGBO Films which is the production company set up by Joe and Anthony Russo using the money and industry cache they've earned from directing some of Marvel's highest grossing and most acclaimed films, including "Captain America: Winter Soldier", "Captain America: Civil War", "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame". Joe Russo is also on writing duty here, but the Marvel connection goes even further with "Extraction" director "Sam Hargrave" being the stunt/fight coordinator on "Civil War" before stepping up to also be second unit director on both "Infinity War" and "Endgame".

From his credits, Hargrave has a long history of stunt and fight work whilst also directing a number of short films and being second unit director on a few other big action films in the last few years - "The Accountant", "Atomic Blonde" and "Deadpool 2".

So it's absolutely no surprise that the best bits of "Extraction" are the fight and action scenes.

They're inventive, well executed and brutal with a very impressive "one-shot" sequence mid-way through. However, the film stumbles when it comes to the plot and character development.

I've not read the source material "Ciudad", so as BBC and The Observer film critic Mark Kermode always says, "I can only judge the film on it's own" and to be honest, there's too much grey in the characters for the story to work. A perfect hero with no flaws doesn't really work anymore, but for a redemption story like this - a tortured mercenary who changes to help an innocent - there needs to be more reason to root for the hero than given here. In fact, my wife and I ended up empathising with one of the other characters who works for a drug-lord instead of Hemsworth, simply because his backstory and motives were more clearly outlined and developed. I appreciate the desire to flesh-out the supporting characters so that they're not just seen as 2D "bad-guys", but if this is done at the expense of the main protagonist, then for me, you lose the level of engagement and connection you need for the overall story to work properly.

Overall, Hemsworth does really well with what he's given and Hargrave should definitely have more opportunities to direct features as he does a great job here for the most part on his debut. If you like hard hitting action, especially films like "John Wick" and "Atomic Blonde", then check this out.

Rating 3/5