‘Extraction’ – Film Review – VultureHound

Chris Hemsworth stars in and produces the latest film produced and developed by his Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo. The AGBO production company run by the brothers has already produced an action vehicle for one of their Avengers with last years so-so 21 Bridges, and this latest (which Joe Russo wrote) is a similar stand-alone actioner that aims to hark back to the more focused self-contained action flicks of the ’90s and early ’00s. While stuntman turned director Sam Hargrave does display some decent chops behind the camera, it’s not in the service of something that is particularly marvelous. 

Hemsworth plays a whiskey slugging black market mercenary with a death wish called Tyler Rake. His new mission seems simple enough: rescue the son of India’s biggest drug lord from Bangladesh, where he is being held for ransom by that country’s biggest drug lord. What should be a fairly normal extraction though soon turns into a fight for survival as corrupt police and elite forces lockdown the city, leaving Rake and the boy with little option but to shoot their way out. 

Extraction doesn’t waste any time getting to the action. The extraction of the title is set up very quickly, laying down the tensions between the warring drug lords efficiently enough to get the ball rolling and drop Rake into the city of Dhaka where the son, Ovi (played by Rudhraksh Jaiswal) is being held. Rake himself is also quickly established as that kind of mercenary with a dark past just looking for the next job, with little hope or desire in his life. It’s all very perfunctory stuff that you’ve seen before in films of this ilk, but the momentum is there to drive the film to the real reason why you came: the action. 

Full review at VultureHound, originally published April 27th 2020.