Extraction surprised me a bit, I have not been very impressed with Netflix’s original film offerings and while this is no masterpiece it was far more watchable than I anticipated. The film’s excellent stunt work and action choreography are where Hargrave’s talent shines through brightest, the ruthless efficiency of the kills and the ongoing struggle of survival comes through loud and clear, helped along by a solid performance from Chris Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, mercenary for hire. The film knows its strengths and indulges us with pacing appropriate for such a film, rarely are we ever more than a few minutes from another action scene going full tilt. However, the film’s greatest strength also somewhat contributes to its biggest problem.
The story as is typical for films such as this is purely a vehicle to drive the action, a framework for set pieces and explosions to be tacked on. This in and of itself is not an issue, the plot drives the action well enough and doesn’t ever become needlessly complicated. The problem is that along with a bare bones plot we get bare bones characters, none of which are given any satisfying level of depth. Given that the film is one long escort mission you’d expect Rake to develop a kinship with his charge and the film clearly intends for this to occur, but it just never convincingly gets there, the few scenes the two have together that don’t involve them running for their lives are so perfunctory as to barely be worth mentioning. Compare this to a film like 16 Blocks, hardly a great film in and of itself, but one with a far more satisfying emotional core. Eddie Bunker and Jack Mosely convincingly develop a relationship in that film and become characters that we care about. None of that happens in Extraction.
Tyler Rake is career soldier who is haunted by a past that is repeatedly teased to us through dreamlike imagery. Very little ever comes of this, without getting into spoilers the revelations of his past will surprise precisely zero people that have ever watched an action film before and are done so casually it just feels like a plot point the director had to check off his list. The film badly wants us to care about Tyler, to care about the boy he’s escorting but it just never gives us any reason to be invested in either of them.
Overall, the film is perfectly watchable because it opts for little characterization as opposed to bad characterization, most of the run time is exciting gory action, a frantic, deadly series of adrenaline spikes. But with an absent emotional core, the film punches below its weight.
6/10 Solid grouping save for the one that missed the paper.