The moment it started, I groaned. “I’ve seen this movie a thousand times,” I thought to myself. If you watched movies in the ‘80s, you have too. An ex-military mercenary with a dead family and suicidal streak gets called in for one last job. “How novel,” I couldn’t help but think. Between Schwarzenegger and Stallone, that ground has been well-tread and overly-worn. Yet, even with its action flick trappings, Extraction manages a surprising amount of popcorn-munching entertainment. It’s a throwback to a bygone era, but its zany action and over-the-top, clichéd characters have an intangible appeal that I can only attribute to my internalized nostalgia for the genre. Is it a great movie? No. But depending on your tolerance for body counts, it is a fun one.
Extraction is wild. Excessive violence, hand-wringing villainry, and formulaic heroes are put into the pot and stirred until overcooked, then seasoned back into palatability with impressive stuntwork, above-average fight choreography, and a fair amount of visual and cinematographic flair. Director Sam Hargrave isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, but he does manage to improve it some. He clearly has a deep knowledge of the films he’s aping, but also the wherewithal to update where necessary, and where to leave things sufficiently ridiculous and cheesy.
The plot – which is largely unimportant – is an amalgamation of ‘80s actioners like Commando (1985) and the Rambo franchise (with, oddly enough, elements of 1963’s High and Low thrown in, if you can believe it). But, if you must know, Tyler (Chris Hemsworth) – an alcoholic mercenary with a death wish – is summoned to Dhaka, Bangladesh to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned drug lord. After the rescue, as is usually the case, he’s betrayed and all hell breaks loose. However, the action that drives the film is anything but predictable, including an impressive “long-take” involving a car chase, a running battle through an apartment building, multiple characters getting hit by cars, and eventually a large explosion.
As can be expected with anything recent from Joe and Anthony Russo (the film was written by Joe and produced by the pair), Extraction leans heavily on military worship, cosplay, vigilantism, and the “civilizing” authority of western culture to a degree that should be uncomfortable but is instead made commonplace due to our decades-long slide into normalized militarism – or am I reading too much into it? At any rate, violence is the only solution ever even considered, culminating in a cartoonishly enormous number of dead bodies that must approach, if not exceed the number of cop cars destroyed in The Blues Brothers. Whether this massive corpse count is a positive or a negative endorsement I’ll leave up to you.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.