Extraction 2 – Awe-Inducing Action With Chris Hemsworth [Review]

How do you top the frenetic action and set pieces of Extraction? That’s a good question, but Extraction 2 somehow does it with more fast-paced and hard-hitting scenes than the first film. Directed by Sam Hargrave and starring Chris Hemsworth, Extraction 2 sees Tyler Rake back after barely surviving the first movie’s events. He’s tasked with another mission, this time rescuing the battered family of a ruthless Georgian gangster from the prison where they’re being held.

It also features Golshifteh Farahani reprising her role from the first film, with Adam Bessa, Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt, and Tinatin Dalakishvili also co-starring. It’s based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks and was written by Joe Russo.

Starting Off With The Bad Of Extraction 2

There’s not much here to complain about regarding Extraction 2. My only real quibble is that after the first film’s events, either the passage of time isn’t represented very well, or Tyler Rake has superhuman healing abilities. There’s a montage of him recovering from his grave wounds and kick-starting his training, but it’s unclear how much time passes between him getting the new mission and actually going out.

Outside of that, there’s not a whole lot of menace from the villain, Zurab, played by Tornike Gogrichiani. He has some excellent motivation behind why he wants to ruin Tyler’s life, but there’s just something missing from the performance. He’s evil but not quite evil enough. Also, he doesn’t pose much of a physical threat to Tyler, even though he’s presented that way. The performance from Tornike is great, though. So those criticisms aren’t really on him, more so on the writers.

Finally, the confrontation between Tyler and Zurab at the end of the film is a bit disappointing in the action department. It feels like they’re heading for a big action set piece, but it ends up smaller than anticipated. Outside of that, Extraction 2 is all-action all the time and translates well into a great movie.

Three Action Set Pieces Set Extraction 2 Apart From The Pack

Three set pieces in Extraction 2 rival any from recent action films. One is the prison break where Tyler and Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) get separated from the pack and have to fight their way through a prison riot. Another is a scene involving a train in Georgia that’s careening toward broken tracks. Finally, the entire third act set piece around a massive building in Austria is absolutely breathtaking.

In an action world where everything looks like a video game, it’s nice to see that Extraction 2 tried to make everything as real as possible with actual helicopters and vehicles careening around dirt roads. They shot the prison riot scene at an actual decommissioned prison in Prague and the courtyard scenes during that riot at a grain storage facility that was built in 1760. The entire crowd in this scene is real and filled with hundreds of stunt performers and extras. It’s a stunning scene where Tyler takes on prison guards and prisoners alike with some absolutely brutal choreography.

The train sequence in the film involves actually landing a helicopter on a moving train, which to my knowledge, is a first. After that, it gets even better with high-powered machine guns and hand-to-hand combat, and once you think the whole thing is done, you get a car chase right after it.

Chris Hemsworth Headlines, But Don’t Forget About The Rest Of The Cast

Chris Hemsworth puts in one of the great action performances in recent memory as Tyler Rake, but the rest of the cast really ups their game to reach his performance. Nik and Yaz Khan (played by Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Bessa) both have some exquisite scenes when they’re on the run from the Georgian mercenaries thrown at them by Zurab. It’s refreshing to see an action movie where a female character isn’t just there to be a love interest for the main character. Nik is badass. She gets plenty of scenes to show off some excellent stunt work. Her chemistry with Hemsworth and Bessa is a real highlight of the film.

The moments where Extraction 2 takes off from just blowing your mind with action are needed, though. It can’t all be fast-paced and frenetic. The film might take some detours for emotional beats that give us an insight into the characters and their feelings, but it only adds to the film. You get to learn more about what makes Tyler Rake the person he is, and how his wounds affect him mentally and physically.

It’s not every day that a movie makes you exclaim out to an empty screening room, “holy shit” or “no, don’t do that, what are you doing” but Extraction 2 and some of the scenes in the movie did just that. If you’re looking for an incredible time watching a movie where you can just kind of enjoy a movie and not think about things too much, Extraction 2 is it.

Extraction 2 releases on Netflix on June 16th.

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