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‘Extraction’ review: Dir. Sam Hargrave (2020)

Netflix

The action comes thick and fast in this impressive, break-neck feature debut from director Sam Hargrave, stunt coordinator on the likes of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame, amongst others.

Chris Hemsworth is Tyler Rake, a black-ops mercenary working in the private sector who takes a job in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The task seems to be a simple extraction; to locate and rescue a young boy after he’s kidnapped by a local gang. Rake and his team have been recruited by a top-ranking officer of an imprisoned drug baron to get his son back home safely, however, a rival crime lord also wants the boy and, after a $10 million bounty is put on the kid’s head, the mission develops into one full of double-crosses, a humongous body-count and seemingly no way out.

As you may expect from a film helmed by a stunt-coordinator, the action comes thick and fast – pretty much from the off and hardly ever lets up. The film’s centrepiece comes around a third of the way in, a jaw-dropping one-er – a 12-minute sequence designed to look like one continuous shot. Full of explosions, thousands of bullets, dozens of bodies, the scene is not only a technical marvel, but one which will have you perched on the edge of your seat throughout. Hemsworth is on fire in a more serious role as the seasoned vet Rake, a man battling an internal war himself, the mission becoming more personal as it expands.

Golshifteh Farahani (Paterson) is also amongst the cast in a role we possibly haven’t seen her in before. She plays a character on the same team as Rake and while she doesn’t have a huge amount of dialogue, her impact in the movie is great, particularly during the closing scenes.

Related: New trailer arrives for upcoming Netflix film Extraction with Chris Hemsworth

Extraction is essentially a film split into two. The first half builds the story whilst also delivering a Valhalla of explosions alongside it. The second half goes deeper, especially into the character of Rake when the violence – and there is a lot of it – briefly slows down to allow a bigger insight into the man, whilst also allowing for a brief, though very good extended cameo from David Harbour.

There’s an extended, very good international cast including Pankaj Tripathi, Randeep Hooda, Marc Donato, Fay Masterson, and Derek Luke, all on great form.

This is an impressive debut for Hargrave. Sure, it goes big on the action and there is a lot of blood spilled, but it is all choreographed so extremely well that you cannot help but to go along with it. The film almost reminded me of the gun-heavy, man-on-a-mission action movies of the 1980s, but also more recent fare like The Raid. It is in that league of proceedings in terms of its unrelenting action but it just about stays on the right side of the outrageously absurd like we’ve seen in the likes of 6 Underground etc. more recently. There is also some stunning cinematography on display from Newton Thomas Sigel, the man behind the camera for the likes of The Usual Suspects, X-Men and, more recently, Drive and Bohemian Rhapsody. It is visually and technically stunning.

Netflix is the suited format for this kind of movie, and the late-night can-in-hand crowd should lap it up. While the violence may put off some, and the many well-conceived set pieces are its biggest asset, there’s a lot going on here to applaud, not least the seemingly huge amount of blood and sweat that has gone into making it both in front and behind the camera. A very decent actioner.

Extraction streams on Netflix from 24th April.

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