Extraction 2 movie review: Chris Hemsworth’s Netflix sequel is bigger, bolder, but not necessarily better than the first one

Name: Extraction 2
Released: 2023-06-15T17:31:16+05:30
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Golshifteh Farahani

Extraction 2 movie review: Director Sam Hargrave ups the ante when it comes to staging elaborately choreographed action, but the movie can't help but feel a little boilerplate, despite Chris Hemsworth and Golshifteh Farahani's committed performances.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Chris Hemsworth in a still from Extraction 2. (Photo: Netflix)

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Extraction 2 movie review: Chris Hemsworth’s Netflix sequel is bigger, bolder, but not necessarily better than the first one

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Even though it’s only been three years, a lot has happened since the first Extraction movie debuted on Netflix in April, 2020 — a pandemic has come and (mostly) gone, the streaming industry is now handing out stuff for free, and both Randeep Hooda and the Russo brothers have decided to set fire to their reputations with recent creative choices. But some things will never change, like the unwritten rule that every Hollywood sequel must outdo the first film in every way possible, or risk being sent to some sort of movie jail. Extraction 2, featuring the return of Chris Hemsworth’s tree trunk of a character Tyler Rake, is a more sprawling experience as compared to the relatively lean first movie, but like most part twos, it isn’t nearly as satisfying.

The film wastes so little time in reviving Rake from the dead — the last time we saw him, the fearless mercenary had been shot in the neck on a Dhaka bridge — that if it had skipped this obligatory sequence altogether, nobody would’ve raised an eyebrow. Nevertheless, his rescue sets up a long-ish stretch in which Rake is first made to recuperate in a Dubai hospital, and then sent by his old partners-in-crime Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and Yaz (Adam Bessa) to live by himself in a log cabin in Austria. But cheating death is meaningless for a man like Rake if he isn’t taunting the Grim Reaper to try him again, and after spending several days fishing in the frozen lake outside his cabin and watching sports with his pet chickens, a mysterious stranger pays him a visit and offers him exactly that — the opportunity to get back in the ring.

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But this time, it’s personal. Rake is tasked with extracting his former sister-in-law, who has been imprisoned by her gangster husband in a Georgian jail along with their two children. How Rake didn’t know that his ex-relative is married to a drug kingpin who holds a cult-like control over a small army isn’t something that the script, credited to Joe Russo, is willing to either address or unpack. But how could you expect it to, when its sole purpose is to find the least complicated routes for Rake to go from one action sequence to the next?

If the first Extraction was a breakneck and ultra-violent spin on Western storytelling tropes, Extraction 2 is more like the sort of Euro-thrillers that seemed to have become so popular in the mid-2000s. For instance, the primary antagonist in this movie reminded me of the villain from Taken 2, and not just because both characters hail from the sort of European nations that only seem to produce criminals in Hollywood movies, but also because of their motivations. In Extraction 2, the villain Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani) doesn’t have global domination or mass genocide on his mind. His reasons for pursuing Rake like a Terminator are purely personal.

But Zurab enters the picture after the movie has already peaked. Like the first film, the highlight of the sequel is also a show stopping action sequence that is stitched together to seem as if it was shot in one unedited take. It’s absolutely breathtaking, and in many ways, more elaborate than the chase sequence from the first film. It begins with Rake infiltrating the Georgian jail where his former sister-in-law is trapped, making his way through a full-blown prison riot in the yard, jumping into a car for a thrilling highway chase, and then catching a goods train while being tailed by enemies in helicopters, Pathaan-style. This unfolds over 20 exhilarating minutes, in which director Sam Hargrave gets to fully expand upon the style that he had teased so wonderfully in the first movie.

Notice Hargrave’s ability to frame masters, inserts and close-ups within the chaotic fight choreography, in addition to flexing his skills at staging coherent close-combat, vehicular action, and large-scale set-pieces. He’ll no doubt have a tremendous career, but one hopes that he is able to stage his own extraction from the AGBO sweatshop soon, because we’ve seen talented action directors be swept away by the allure of franchise filmmaking before. And on more than one occasion while watching Extraction 2, you get the briefest hint that this is where Hargrave might be headed as well. Because as thrilling as that centrepiece sequence is, it doesn’t have the rugged brutality of the first movie, and involves a lot of (noticeable) CGI.

But there’s a bigger problem at play here, not with the scene itself, but with its positioning in the film. It starts at around the 30-minutes mark, and even though it goes on for a while, by the time it’s over, there’s over an hour of movie still remaining. To nobody’s surprise, Hargrave is never able to recapture that level of excitement again. He could’ve attempted an Athena, and surprised viewers with another, equally elaborate action sequence towards the end. But there’s no third-act trump card here, and Extraction 2’s relatively restrained final showdown can’t help but feel a little anticlimactic.

What made the first movie such a disruptor (despite its rather familiar set-up and structure) was that it invited active participation from the audience by not revealing too much about Rake. Because he was such a blank slate, almost like John Wick, you felt compelled to project your own fears and anxieties onto him. But Extraction 2 leaves little to the imagination. Rake spends most of the movie guiding characters in a particular direction, and it’s like he feels compelled to do this with audiences as well.