We are in a great little action revival! Last 2 years has brought us RRR, Top Gun: Maverick, The Woman King, Prey, Sisu, Polite Society, and John Wick: Chapter 4 alone! Extraction 2 definitely continues the trend, going bigger and badder with their 2nd extraction plot. Maybe that’s it: great action movies come with great action hero names: Komaram Bheem, Pete Maverick Mitchell, Nanisca, Ria Khan, Naru, Sisu, John Wick, and now Tyler Rake.
Mr. Rake (Chris Hemsworth), when we last saw him, had gotten shot multiple times extracting a boy from Dhaka. Tyler is saved by business assassin partner Nik (Golshifteh Farahani), and decides to retire in rural Austria with his chickens. But retire he cannot as a blast from the Rake past shows up in a Georgian (the country) prison, where Tyler has to extract another family, but for more personal reasons this time.
While I liked the first Extraction, it’s a pretty impersonal film. Sam Hargrave’s action direction is incredible, but character wise the story flimsily justifies why Tyler Rake would be willing to take these crazy risks for a kid he has no relation to. Well, in Extraction 2, the Russo Brothers do a better job with a 2nd crack at a backstory. Using the good pieces from the first, we get a much better crafted morality tale in the sequel. Themes of family and trust are explored, and give the movie a much more propulsive momentum than the first movie had, as the grey here makes the story more interesting.
But Netflix reupped with Hemsworth, Hargrave, and the Russos for some of that killer action setpiece work. As good as the city car chase escape was in the first one, the Georgian prison escape sequence is 10 times better. Hargrave deploys the same tactics as the first movie, using handheld camera sequences to make you feel like you’re part of Tyler Rake’s crew as he tries to extract his latest targets. But the 20+ minute long sequence has more location transitions than I’ve ever seen attempted in a film. The first half inside the prison is filled with incredible hand to hand combat sequences akin to the battle in The Raid 2, concluding with some gnarly brutal finishing moves. We then transition on the road and then onboard a train, with helicopters landing on the train in real time and exploding within a few feet of Chris Hemsworth. That’s ballsy, daring stuff, but because of the preparation and expertise of everyone involved, that sequence will be one of the best things I see in 2022, an amazing tapestry of coordinated action mayhem for the viewing pleasure of Netflix audiences chilling at home. The ending setpiece in Vienna is pretty solid too, though it’s main purpose is for pushing the plot and story forward and as such is merely pretty great.
I don’t know how Extraction 3 is going to up the ante. But Sam Hargrave, Chris Hemsworth, Golshifteh Farahani, and the rest have proven they’re willing to put in the work to make something incredible. They’ve earned my trust. And Russos, keep writing awesome action names. With the cameo you have in this movie, give that person a cool name in the next one, something like John Rambo. Wait, I think that one’s taken.