“You drown not by falling into the river, but by staying submerged in it.”
Review by Lewis Goodall
I have a love hate relationship with this film. In the sense of it being a film, I loved it. How jealous it made me is another topic. Have you ever looked at someone and thought that they must’ve been crafted by God himself and placed on Earth to make everyone else feel like dirt? That’s Chris Hemsworth, he’s the alpha male and everyone else is a failed imitation and that’s why I hate it, but the film itself is amazing.
Extraction, Directed by Sam Hargrave, is a cliche but hard hitting action film about the abduction of a drug lords son. Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), is kidnapped by a rival drug lord and held to humiliate his father who is in jail. Ovi’s father, Ovi Senior who is in jail, gets his best man, Saju (Randeep Hooda) on the job to steal back his son. Saju thinks “ah hell nah I’ll be killed In seconds!”, so he hires Tyler Rake (Chris ‘God of thunder’ Hemsworth) to complete the impossible task.
Just a brief summary of what happens in the film right there, pretty simple premise, get the most bad ass person you know to carry out an impossible mission. Now every time I watch an action film, I just cant help but compare it to John Wick, which in my eyes is the perfect action film. Extraction takes the John Wick formula and replicates it perfectly, I wouldn’t say it exceeds but its definitely matched. The action sequences in extraction are down right incredible, including a 12 minutes long shot which always gets Lewis a bit tingly. Every punch, every kick, every gunshot hits hard. It certainly didn’t wimp out with showing you how brutal Tyler Rake can be. Watching him tackle a group of mercenaries that have been sent to hunt him down is always exhilarating and realistic. The realism comes from the fact that Tyler does get hurt, quite a bit in fact. He doesn’t just shrug off a hit to the arm, he puts on a sling which I felt added to the action and made it more engaging knowing you’re action watching a human and not a machine like some other action films when they can get shot in the eye and still have breakfast.
The action does pretty much last the entire film so if you’re looking for an all out action then this is it, one hour and thirty five minutes of pure adrenaline. It wouldn’t be an action film without an emotional cliche thrown in now would it. With Tyler, he has an emotional back story which I guess brings you closer to the character but in this it just kind of seems thrown in to give some depth. It really didn’t need to add the backstory, it didn’t add anything to the story in my opinion, i’m not opposed to it being in the film I just felt it was unneeded. Just have a tough guy who is cool with popping skulls but also with a happy childhood.
Overall this film is an action fan orgasm. It has all the components of a great action film with moments that will make anyone go “oof, that must’ve hurt”. The emotional scenes didn’t take up too much of the run time which is fine, if they added those in to get the ladies interested then there was no point, the ladies wont be listening because they’ll be too focused on Chris Hemworths brutal swans, as was I.
Critically Ashamed 