Adapted from the graphic novel “Ciudad” written by Ande Parks and the Russo Bros. with art by Fernando León González, Extraction provides a surprisingly solid turn by Chris Hemsworth and a good example of what strong action storytelling looks like all the while falling into a pit of hollow and problematic narrative cliches.
With how modern blockbusters are made there can be the feeling of a disconnect between sequences that are understood as “talking” and ones of “action,” despite Hollywood’s historical attempts to hide this dissonance. You can notice it quite a bit in Marvel Studio films not due to a lack of quality but through the persistence of quality that makes the basic structure of their action sequences rote. The dissonance in most contemporary spectacle films is born from how pre viz works, turning pacing and scripting more into a puzzle to string these big sequences together than a clean dramatic curve. Extraction is not a major action blockbuster, in another time it would have been, with a reported budge of $65 million it falls into the nebulous mid budget feature that has the hint of scale and prestige due to the films cast and producers. Despite lacking blockbuster status, Extraction still features that disconnect between moments of action and moments of dialog but for different reassons.
Extraction is director Sam Hargrave feature film debut, he has an extensive list of credits doing second unit and stunt work for a variety of features most notably working with the Russo Brothers on their various Marvel movies. The dissonance in Extraction isn’t due to a failure on his part or his crew to make the moments of dialog driven sequences feel apiece with all the running, jumping, and killing. The two-hander between Hemsworth and David Harbour that comes about an hour in is pretty good. The performances by Hemsworth and Rudhraksh Jaiswal are well done. The tingling sensation of dissonance comes through when that particular mode of storytelling is shown to be inefficient as it tells the audience something it has already been shown about these characters.
There is this quote from Kathryn Bigelow in the Monthly Film Bullettin from November 1991 that kept ringing in my mind throughout the viewing of Extraction: “action movies have a capacity to be pure cinema, in that you can’t recreate their kinetic, visual quality in any other medium.” The basic plot of the film is straight forward and kinetic: after Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) is kidnapped his family hires Tyler Rake(Chris Hemsworth) and his team to get the boy back. What follows is their attempts to get out of Dhaka, Bangladesh after some complications along the way. The film is a series of chase sequences and shootouts as Tyler and Ovi try to make it the few miles separating them from freedom. It is a plot that is predicated on action, constant movement, and when they aren’t movie things become tense and anxious. This is the basic premise that supports the standout chase sequence in the film, a sequence that is put together to be like a roughly 10-minute-long take. This action logic is the same that drives standout films like The Raid or fellow Netflix actioner Triple Frontier.
It is in these moments of action that the character of Tyler Rake comes through the clearest as Hemsworth throws himself at the seemingly endless henchmen that get in the way. When we first meet Rake he gets up from a stupor to jump off a 30 meter cliff into a lake, waiting at the bottom with his breath as hazy images of his dead son flash on screen. In the span of 90 seconds audiences understand Rake’s mental state and his reckless drive. That backstory isn’t original in the slightest but left unsaid and simply shown allows the audience to put the pieces together. The underutilized Golshifteh Farahani’s line minutes later about Rake playing Russian Roulette with these missions becomes extremely unnecessary. The dialog tell is similarly unnecessary about an hour in when Tyler and Ovi have a heart to heart after a very long day. Audiences already know what is going to being said about Rake’s backstory even if they don’t know the specifics and they understand the childish awe Ovi looks at him, all of this was established through the various chases and escapes up to this point. Extraction is a movie that is at its best when it speaks through action capturing how the actors use their bodies to tell you about the character and mental state. When it is out of action the script by Joe Russo falls into cliché dialog and motivation when it didn’t have to.
Continued belowThe way Extraction manages to undermine itself through the use of cliché dialog and backstory is an interesting test case. John Wick is a franchise predicated on a maudlin, cliché, premise of revenge because the titular characters dog – a gift from his dead wife! – was murdered by a bunch of punks. Where the Chad Stahelski David Leitch film manages to overcome this premise is through the execution of style, that is the synergistic marshalling of film as a medium, from cinematography, to choreography and others, that creates depth. The emphasis on style as substance to overcome what would be on paper cliché beginnings is one of the core strengths of Leitch’s follow up film Atomic Blonde. Extraction finds itself uncomfortably in between the action logic of films like Triple Frontier and overt stylish sense of cool that films by Stahelski and Leitch produce. The film fits in the same action premise as Frontier but lacks the cast and quality scripting to elevate its basic premise into something more. Meanwhile Hargrave’s execution of style to create an atmosphere and narrative is less flashy but in the same space as Stahelski and Leitch which only helps to heighten the films shortcomings during the in between moments.
Action cinema is often thought about in more aesthetic terms these days, which makes sense, but in reinforcing the aesthetic qualities there is a lack of examining the political rhetoric created with that aesthetic. Russo’s dialog scripting is poor, but the core narrative of the film is fraught with political elements that do not play well. The character of Tyler Rake metaphorically reenacts core colonialist narratives of white superiority through the father-son relationship that is developed between him and Ovi based around the rescue plot. This father-son dynamic is contrasted with Amir Asif(Priyanshu Painyuli), the drug lord who kidnaps Ovi, and Farhad(Suraj Rikame). Asif’s villainy is cartoonishly overdone, he is introduced watching a henchman randomly throw a child off a building. Rake is shown to be a mass murderer but pointedly doesn’t kill children, not even the “Goonies from Hell.” Extraction plays in tired racist hierarchies that feel extremely out of place in a movie that tries so hard to be an international feature. A majority of the cast are allowed to speak location appropriate languages, except to randomly come in with bits of English that emphasize the emotional connections they have to one another as if the film doesn’t trust American audiences to read that bit of the subtitle like they had minutes prior. The action is spectacular but the meanings derived from those spectacular images are problematic at best.
After being introduced to mainstream audiences Chris Hemsworth seemed destined for classic Hollywood superstardom. I mean look at him, there’s a reason he got the gratuitous and hilariously long shirtless moment in Thor: The Dark World. He looks like the second coming of Sylvester Stallone, unlike Stallone the straight action film hasn’t really been a strong suit for him (or other actors of his generation.) Overall as an actor Hemsworth has proven to more adept at playing with his body and against type with really good comedic timing. After watching Extraction another answer to why there is a lack of typical action movies built around his generation, maybe it was because he was in bad action movies like 12 Strong or Red Dawn. Maybe the answer, like most things in Hollywood, is just make good movies. Hargrave and company turn Hemsworth into the action hero he would’ve been had he existed in the 1980s, with the shift from traditional indestructible hard body to the indefatigable body. With great choreography and modern sound design Hemsworth is made believable bad ass, there is a fluidity to his execution of choreography that shows a thought process without coming off as puppeteer. That stands in contrast to his performance in that bedroom scene where fails to sell any sort of interiority as he goes on about Rake’s sob.
Extraction is an enjoyable if frustrating movie. The action sequences are largely good to great, it’s the kind of movie I’m glad is on Netflix. It’s also a movie that could easily have been cut down by 10-15 minutes through excising needless dialog scenes and becoming something closer to the “pure cinema” Bigelow spoke of in the 90s.
