Plane, Pathaan, The Roundup: No Way Out, Kill Boksoon, John Wick: Chapter 4, upcoming thrills big and small from Tom Cruise’s next superspy stunt spectacular to William Kaufman’s latest tactical crime shoot-‘em-up: 2023 has been a gift for action junkies. With Extraction 2, director Sam Hargrave adds a ferocious entry to the year’s offerings. If John Wick: Chapter 4 was a film that married direct-to-video gems’ action-first flair with mythic grandeur and lush globetrotting scale, then Extraction 2 is that same DTV flavor executed via a film that embraces the clichéd simplicity that made many fans and has been given a Hollywood blank check for carnage. Genre aficionados with fond memories of the European industrial backdrops of John Hyams’ Universal Soldier: Regeneration, or of the tactical kung fu in Isaac Florentine’s U.S. Seals II, will feel right at home.
Chris Hemsworth’s Aussie extraction specialist Tyler Rake is back from the dead (nothing that a hospital stay and a few weeks of Rocky IV-style cabin training can’t fix!). While the original film was a survive-the-city actioner with a dash of heroic bloodshed respect via Randeep Hooda’s rival operator, the sequel hinges on a more personal and sprawling mission. Recruited by his ex-wife (and by Idris Elba’s mystery man/franchise set-up) to rescue her sister, held captive in a Georgian prison by her kingpin husband, Rake is back to fighting form by the 20-minute mark and what follows is a nearly nonstop onslaught by fist, bullet, cars, train and helicopter. Golshifteh Farahani as handler Nik returns as well for far more in-the-action screentime, along with her equally skilled brother Yaz (Adam Bessa) to turn this sequel into a team-on-a-mission pursuit packed with prison-wide mayhem, locomotive sieges and 50-story gunfights.
Hargrave’s direction was fierce in the first film but he seems unleashed in this follow-up, kicking off a breathless adrenaline rush with a 21-minute one-take that weaves an escape through prison bowels, riot chaos akin to The Raid 2’s iconic yard bedlam, backcountry vehicular chaos and a cargo train assault all through one astoundingly coordinated action frenzy. Often digitally stitched oners are maligned for their obvious seams and overuse nowadays, but the technical craft and effectiveness at immersing the audience in the characters’ grueling, unrelenting extraction are undeniable. Hemsworth pounding faces in with flaming fists and prison dumbbells, while Hargrave transitions seamlessly into a SnooriCam shot in the midst of the unbroken action, just further cements both star and director as two of the genre’s current titans.
A proper team dynamic, more immediately engaging stakes, and that bigger set-piece canvas compensate for a script that trims drama to merely brief breathers and contrivances between action. It’s a testament then that Hemsworth, along with Olga Kurylenko as his ex-wife, are able to bring some emotional weight and a sense of lingering guilt to the film. Rake’s turmoil over leaving his dying child for another tour of duty in Afghanistan may be as unabashedly clichéd as a sad-badass-dad backstory, but the cast makes the gossamers of human drama work between the explosions.
Alongside Hemsworth’s presence and Hargrave’s spectacle, Farahani is elevated to an electric co-lead, given the film’s other character-driven dynamic and some of its most blistering fights. The entire second act is a skyscraper-spanning shootout that allows Farahani, Bessa, and Hemsworth to battle from parking garbage to rooftop, stairwells to high-rise gym. It’s another bravura thrill ride of an extended set-piece elevated by a team of distinct henchmen (including the great Daniel Bernhardt) each getting their own little fight or gunplay to shine. By contrast, the finale might underwhelm with a smaller intimate scope but the improvised weapon brutality that caps off this epic old-school throwback doesn’t disappoint either.
Whether one wants to see Hemsworth snapping necks with a treadmill, Farahani shredding foes in a claustrophobic knife fight or to just soak in minutes upon minutes of bruising and bullet-riddled choreography, Extraction 2 delivers in ultra-violent blockbuster fashion. The story may be boilerplate, the villains are generic but the action is anything but. With the recent announcement of a third film, the only question remains is how Hargrave will top himself next time.
Photo courtesy of Netflix
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