EXTRACTION II - Mark Reviews Movies

Extraction II, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 15, 2023

After barely surviving seemingly certain death, Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth), the mercenary-for-hire who specializes in rescuing people from dangerous situations, simply asks what he's supposed to do now. It's probably hoping for too much that the sequel to an action movie might address that question seriously, especially since any movie successful enough to warrant a follow-up becomes a sequel that has its eyes on starting on a series. Such a venture can change certain things, such as the way Extraction II has a larger scope within its barebones plot and more characters to participate in said plot, but the foundation of the material, perhaps, is the one thing that cannot be altered.

Hence, we get a sequel that's more or less a copy of its predecessor. In some ways, that's fine, because returning director Sam Hargrave retains the eye for action he displayed three years ago with Extraction, his debut feature, and Hemsworth remains one of the most appealing of the modern crop of movie stars. It's difficult to find much fault with the movie in its drive to give us violent, cleverly staged action when it's actually doing so, and because there isn't much to this story or these characters, there's little time when Hargrave and screenwriter Joe Russo aren't giving us some sort of action sequence.

Foundationally, though, this movie is essentially a copy of what came before it, only with a different set of locations, a larger cast, and a more personal motivation for our hero. For some, that will sound like a criticism, and to others, that will come across as an endorsement. It's neither, unfortunately, because this sequel is just as competent, forgettable, and, whenever there aren't any guns or fists or assorted fast-moving vehicles involved, unimaginative as its predecessor, too. The movie does what it needs to do, but one does come away wishing it even thought of wanting to do just a little bit more.

The story picks up almost immediately following the end of the previous movie, with Tyler shot in the neck and falling into a river at the end of his mission to rescue a teenage boy from abduction in India. Some locals find him, barely alive, and a team of fellow mercenaries, led by his long-time colleague and friend Nik (Golshifteh Farahani), get him to a hospital in Dubai.

After awakening from a coma, our man is in a bad state—barely able to walk, finding the exertion of his limbs to cause considerable pain, uncertain if a man who relies on his body to do the only job he knows how to do can live like this. Putting Tyler in this predicament is such a potentially potent idea, but to get an idea of how the filmmakers implement it, take what immediately follows into consideration.

Living in isolation in a cabin somewhere in Austria, Tyler is approached by a mysterious man, played by Idris Elba, who has a new mission for him. The sister of Tyler's ex-wife is married to a Georgian gangster, and she and her two children are living in the same prison as the criminal at his request. She wants herself and her kids out of that horrible situation, and a quick training montage is all it takes for Tyler to get back into prime shape and get over his existential crisis.

The rest of the plot probably doesn't need to be described or explained, because it's mostly an excuse for Hargrave to stage a series of elaborate sequences. The first of the major ones even follows a certain pattern that this installment and the previous movie clearly establish. It's a faux one-take, much like a similarly show-stopping sequence from the first movie, of the eponymous mission, with Tyler infiltrating the Georgian prison, finding his former sister-in-law and her kids, and getting them out of there.

There are complications, of course, including a prison riot and the gangster's crew chasing after Tyler's team, although that's obviously downplaying what Hargrave actually does here. That's to take us seamlessly through a series of escalating fights and chases and shootouts inside the prison and beyond—namely a fast-moving train that's being attacked by a pair of helicopters and boarded by the gangster's well-armed-and-armored henchmen.

That sequence is pure, exhilarating spectacle. Maybe, though, it's the wrong one to serve as an introduction to this movie's action, since everything else—as effective, brutal, and, on occasion, intentionally amusing as it may be—feels underwhelming in the sequence's shadow. Those other ones have their moments, to be sure—from Tyler using gym equipment in ways the manufacturer probably never considered warning about to a fight atop a glass awning at the highest point of a skyscraper. The climactic fight, against a vengeful member of the gangster's family, in a church under renovation couldn't feel more like more anticlimax following the rest of it.

Still, Extraction II does more or less do what it sets out to accomplish, and Hemsworth adds some additional layers of grief and regret before whatever the third movie, which the sequel teases as heading in a similar direction under new management, has in store for Tyler. None of it, though, feels like a step forward. The whole movie is a lateral move in terms of quality and maybe a step backwards because it establishes and never veers from its own formula.

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