‘You drown not by falling into the river, but by staying submerged in it…’
The John Wick franchise has demonstrated beyond doubt that there is an appetite for straightforward, old-fashioned, action movies. The kind that used to be the preserve of Arnie, Sly Stallone and JCVD but now seem harder and harder to come by. Extraction follows the John Wick model of a man on a mission but stuntman-turned-director Sam Hargrave offers up more than just a bland retread of other movies…
Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth), a fearless black-market mercenary, is hired by an international crime lord (Pankaj Tripathi) to retrieve and return his kidnapped son Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal). Happily, the plot never becomes any more complicated than that one-sentence synopsis. Exactly as it should be for a film of this sort.
Based on Ande Parks’ graphic novel Ciudad and adapted for the screen by the Russo brothers, Extraction keeps things nice and simple. The many, many gun fights, fist fights and car chases are frantic and well-directed, with Hargrave confirming that he has an eye for an action sequence. I would argue that even for a genre famed for its one-dimensional characters, the main players here are particularly thinly drawn, but we aren’t here for characters, we’re here for cool shit going down. To that end, a stony-faced turn from Hemsworth fits the overall tone of the piece perfectly and he leaves it to newcomer Jaiswal to provide the film’s rare moments of emotional poignancy. That’s not to take away from Hemsworth’s performance, however. Other than an enjoyable cameo from David Harbour, it is up to the Australian heartthrob to keep the action propulsive and the plot believable and he just about manages to do both here.
Extraction is not quite as nuanced and as effective as John Wick but in a genre that is sadly under-represented in modern-day cinema, Hargrave’s action thriller is a worthy addition to the canon.