Tyler Rake. With a name like that, he would either be a stuntman, a porn star, or a highly skilled extraction specialist. Luckily for us, it was the latter, and so we get to enjoy the Extraction movies. Chris Hemsworth returns as the ex-Australian SAS operative turned mercenary who gets paid a lot of money for getting people out of tight spaces.
The last movie was something of a streaming phenomenon. It landed on the streamer at the exact time that vast swathes of the world were told to stay in their homes due to a nasty cold.
The result was the explosion in streaming numbers, and Extraction scored big time. It is still one of the top-streamed movies on Netflix to this day. I was a big fan of the first one. As I mentioned before, it was a simple, straightforward action movie that reminded me of films I would rent endlessly on VHS and watch the shit out of growing up.
The directors of most of the best bits of the MCU, the Russo Bros., were producers and the talent applied a certain kind of polish to the proceedings, but its simplicity was a big part of its success.
People get dead, and stuff gets blown up real good, as a stoic man with good skills has a simple goal. Get himself and his protectees to safety.
Helicopters… explodey!
This simplicity is key again in Extraction 2. This time the dusty streets of Dakhar are replaced with the grime of the former Soviet Bloc and the Teutonic symmetry of Austria, but it still works.
Seriously wounded Rake, last seen falling off a bridge in Dhakar with a gunshot wound to the neck, is fished out of a river downstream by his support team and whisked to the finest medical facility money can buy in Dubai.
After a coma, an awakening, and a rehabilitation he finds himself in a cabin in Austria trying to return to health and get his head around the idea of retirement. This all changes when a previously unannounced Idris Elba turns up and hires him for another mission. Queue a Rocky IV-like snowbound training montage as Rake sharpens himself up, and off he goes to action once more.
The goal this time is a little closer to home. Rake still carries the mental scars of the death of his young son to illness while he was on deployment in Afghanistan with the SAS. This caused the breakdown of his marriage, as referenced in the first movie. The package is the sister of his ex-wife and her two children.
The catch? The family is currently imprisoned at Tkachiri prison in Georgia. Rake has to get them out and away from the husband. The rest of the husband’s side of the family, a brutal Georgian mafia gang, are not happy about this plan.
Swarthy Eastern Europeans are born to be villains in this world
So people get dead and things get blown up real good… again, and it is absolutely glorious!
Extraction 2 is big, but it is most definitely not clever, and it never tries to be. Just like the first movie, it knows exactly what it is, exactly what you want, and does absolutely nothing to try and subvert your expectations or get ideas above its station. It simply gets on with delivering violence, death, destruction, explosions, and gunplay at an incredible pace.
Unashamedly a “guy” movie, it features a hero who takes a licking but keeps on ticking. After absorbing punishment that would send mortal man to the morgue, Rake shakes himself off and keeps punching, or shooting, his way forward. It is so old-fashioned, while at the same time being polished and shiny and new.
Georgian Prison, come armed.
With just 15 minutes of set-up and exposition, it is straight into the action. The actual mechanics of this movie are pretty astonishing. After the opening, it is basically a single, giant action set-piece for about the next 40 minutes.
Then there is a brief lull for the bare minimum of plot development, followed by another extended action set-piece that must also be knocking on the door of about 30 minutes. Another (very) short break, and it is head-first to the end. Thats it. no fat. No bloat. Just two giant action sequences and a climatic fight, with the flimsiest of tissue connecting them.
In a world where even superhero movies are 2 hours and 45 minutes long, rammed with moralising and soul searching, this feels superbly refreshing.
If you haven’t punched somebody on fire, while being on fire yourself, this weekend are you really a man?
It also definitely sets your heart racing through the action scenes. You also can’t talk about Extraction 2 without talking about a particular shot. In the first movie, there was a very extended shot that follows Rake through an apartment building, almost as if in a third-person shooter video game, as he dishes out one hell of a beating on the people who have come for him. Extraction 2 takes the same approach, but multiplied by 1000.
This time we get an astonishing 21-minute-long single shot (with trickery, of course) that simply does not stop as it moves from prison to 4×4 to train, featuring dirtbikes, ATVs, helicopters, commandos, explosions, a mini-gun, and still manages to take the time to be a great advertisement for bulletproof glass before showing you what being inside a train crash would feel like. It is as nuts, and as captivating, as it sounds.
The final fight is brutal, as two people dish out and absorb Rambo levels of violence and injury in between considering the morals of suicide bombings, and leaving just enough time for some noble sacrifice.
The heroes are heroic, the villains are swarthy Eastern Europeans who all smoke while looking like they need a good bath. Extraction 2 is so deliciously on point that it is a real achievement that it doesn’t become a parody, but it doesn’t because it sticks to its lane perfectly.
This is how stoics open doors. True story.
Settle down on the couch, crack open the beers, be a man, and enjoy the unapologetic man movie. In a world of full of The Little Mermaid, be an Extraction 2.
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