A follow-up to the 2020 hyperviolent Chris Hemsworth Netflix action thriller, “Extraction 2″ is a cinematic diversion that asks: Would you like to see a man’s hand split down the middle? Ripped apart in a way that has you thinking: Now there’s a “live long and prosper” salute gone very wrong. Well, pal, have I got a movie for you.
Last we saw Hemsworth’s Tyler Rake, the black ops mercenary with a talent for rescuing — sorry, extracting — people out of bad situations, he was battered and bleeding and plunging from a bridge to a watery grave.
If you forgot any of that in the intervening years, a recap of the final sequence is helpfully recycled in the opening moments of “Extraction 2: The Dentist Will See You Now.” (I kid! Bodies take a beating, but not a pearly white is busted out of place.)
The original ends with a brief postscript: The rescued teenage son of a drug lord is reacclimating to life when, suddenly, a hazy Tyler-shaped figure appears in the distance, suggesting he survived that terrible fall after all and is now paying the kid a visit. The new movie retcons that — didn’t happen, folks! — and instead picks up with our man washed up ashore somewhere, not long after plummeting from the bridge, and he’s airlifted out. There’s some recuperating in a hospital, and then early retirement to a cabin in the Australian woods.
Tyler is a man so sad and alone that when his partner-in-extraction (Golshifteh Farahani) gives him a ride to his new abode, she notes with considerable pity that the contents of his life fit into no more than a shoe box. “Maybe it’s time to change that,” she says. (I dunno, seems environmentally friendly to me.)
His restless solo existence is interrupted when Idris Elba stops by as a high-end recruiter of sorts, hoping to pull Tyler back in for One Last Job. Tyler is going to say yes. This is inevitable. But first we must go through the motions: “Why don’t you go back and tell whoever sent you I’m not interested,” he tells Elba’s fixer. Pul-ease, of course he’s interested.
The extractees this time are his sister-in-law and her two kids, living in a Georgian prison (that would be Georgia, the country) while her husband serves out a sentence relating to the billion-dollar heroin and weapons empire he runs with his equally brutal Euro-gangster of a brother. The husband wants his nearest and dearest with him on the inside, where he can keep an eye on them. Not a great place to raise a family, though. So the guy’s wife goes behind his back to secure an escape with her kids, which requires Tyler’s expertise.
“Job starts in six weeks,” says Elba’s swaggering mystery man. “If all goes well and you don’t get caught or shot in the face, I’ll meet you on the other side and give you a kiss. Failing that, it’s been a pleasure.”
Cue the training montage, as Tyler gets mission-ready by stacking big rocks and chopping wood.
His muscles bulging again, he and his team gear up for “Prison Break: Georgia.” Armed to the teeth, Tyler’s arrival on the grounds is announced with a single guitar chord, but things go left almost immediately and it becomes one man against a melee as Tyler guides his clients through the labyrinth to safety. I’m not kidding when I say at one point he throws punches while his fists are aflame, which suggests some intriguing ideas for another sequel: “Extraction 3: Fists of Fire.”
The prison sequence is pretty compelling, as these things go. Midway through, Tyler is clobbered on the head and everything goes silent except for muted buzzing as the concussion sets in. Doesn’t stop him, though. Is this the testosterone-infused version of “nevertheless, she persisted”?
Though based on a graphic novel, both movies have the feel of a first person shooter video game. Hemsworth’s physical stature does a lot of the heavy lifting, literally and otherwise, but Tyler is not a character so much as an avatar.
He’s in this line of work for the money, but also, he cares. Even so, he has no discernible personality and the flat psuedo-quips sprinkled throughout the script barely register as banter. “These men are killers,” he’s warned. “Yeah? So am I.” That rhetorical tic returns again and again. Bad guy: “I’m going to enjoy killing you.” Tyler: “Yeah? Get in line.” Oh, he’s also multilingual! “Since when do you speak Georgian?” “Since always.”
“Extraction 2″ is written by Joe Russo (who also cowrote the original) and about half of the film’s dialogue is “Arggggh!” — it’s an aria of argggghs — and the other half might as well be the fast fashion of dialogue, made with little craft or care. Director Sam Hargrave knows his action but doesn’t have much flair for humor, though it does sneak in here and there, including his own cameo as a gravedigger, which functions as a silent, blink-or-you’ll-miss-it one-man performance of Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, take your pick.
Less an original movie than an assemblage of ideas pulled from other movies, “Extraction 2″ includes a car chase that’s meant to look as if it was shot in a single take, with the camera swooping in and out vehicles in a style reminiscent of a (better) scene from “Children of Men.” Later, Tyler will find himself dangling from a beam, like Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible,” off the top of a skyscraper. Mid-hang, he’s shot through the back of his hand — that’s got to hurt! — but he never loses his grip. A gunshot wound as stigmata. Subtle!
At the hour-twenty mark you might find yourself thinking: There’s 30 minutes left in this thing? Well, yes. There is. Go back in the kitchen and make more popcorn, I guess. The movie’s thwack-thwack-thwack-ping! gunfire sound effects budget must have rivaled Hemsworth’s fee. And I appreciate the blunt, violent wit of the climax, shot from overhead as Tyler permanently silences his nemesis as they lie side-by-side on a church floor in a pool of their own blood.
Weeks after the first “Extraction” premiered on Netflix, it was anointed the streamer’s most-watched original movie. I don’t know if the sequel will match that, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t. It’s actually the better movie of the two. And while Tyler never says the words “I’ll be back” (to borrow from yet another movie), I’ve no doubt that’s precisely what’s in store.
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‘EXTRACTION 2’
2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong/bloody violence throughout and language)
Running time: 2:02
How to watch: On Netflix Friday
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