'Extraction': A condensed dosage of action

CAIRO – 28 April 2020: On April 24 Netflix released its latest productions, which is the action movie ''Extraction''.

Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth), a black-market mercenary and former Australian Special Air Service Regiment soldier, is recruited by fellow mercenary Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani) to rescue Ovi Mahajan Junior (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the son of India's biggest drug lord Ovi Mahajan Senior (Pankaj Tripathi), from Dhaka, Bangladesh because he is held for ransom by Bangladesh's biggest drug lord, Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli).

While Tyler was in the process of extracting Ovi from his kidnappers, Saju (Randeep Hooda), a former Special Forces soldier and Ovi's father, chief henchman, kills Tyler's teammates and attempts to bring the boy back, doing so in fear of his family being killed by Ovi Mahajan senior and in order to avoid paying the substantial ransom money, which neither he nor Ovi's junior father can afford.


As a result Asif calls for an immediate lockdown of Dhaka, Tayler found himself fighting with the police, Asif and his men in addition to Saju.

"Extraction" is an AGBO Films and TGIM Films Inc. production; it is produced by Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca, Chris Hemsworth, Eric Gitter, and Peter Schwerin. The action-packed thriller contains a very condensed dosage of action scenes, which despite being well-executed, negatively affected the movie's dialogue and plot.

The movie's director of photography did a great job mastering the camera movement, achieving the difficult equation between preserving the rapid pace of such an action film and making every scene clear to the audience. Other action films are very fast paced to the extent that you don’t know who is fighting with whom, which is a common mistake in a number of action movies.

First-time director Sam Hargrave relies mainly on his experience as a stunt coordinator for several of the Marvel movies. His great experience helped him in making to the point action scenes but nothing is extraordinary, catchy or dazzling.

Chris Hemsworth had a good chance in this movie to stretch his acting chops a bit, although the role doesn’t require high acting capabilities, but needed fitness for the execution of the different action scenes.

The good acting performance of Hemsworth only appeared in his two scenes with Rudhraksh Jaiswal; the first was when he opened his heart to him about how he lost his only son for cancer and the second was when he asked him to go to the helicopter and leave him to die.

Both Hemsworth and Jaiswal managed to make us feel the emotions that were born between them and the fatherly feelings that Tyler felt towards Ovi.

The young actor Rudhraksh Jaiswal's performance was good but his role didn't require strong acting skills as well.

His master scene away from Hemsworth was after he killed Tyler’s friend, who wanted to kill him to take $10 million from Amir Asif. The sorrow, sadness, shock and grief that were clear on his face showed that we are in front of a promising actor who will have a bright future.

The weakest point in the movie was the traditional plot that needed more details, as it was vague in some points.

The movie makers didn’t pay the needed attention to the plot maybe because they focused on the action dosage. But, in order to have a good action movie, you should have a much stronger plot.