It’s very hard to say much of anything about Extraction 2. Chris Hemsworth is good, but you could’ve guessed that. Without him, this franchise likely would’ve been dead on arrival. Outside of some compelling beats of action, which, to be fair, shouldn’t be understated, this franchise has not risen above it’s bad dialogue and contrived storytelling thus far, and considering the last-second setup in this one for a threequel, you shouldn’t expect it to anytime soon.
The Russo brothers, with all their talk of dying movie theaters and Tik-Tok inspired modern filmmaking, are not doing themselves any favors here. Their script is the biggest problem. It utilizes tried and tired directions for a story that’s been told a thousand times, and here, they worsen that by relying almost solely on repetitive flashbacks.
Again, Hemsworth is really good. He’s doing his best with what he has and pulling out all the stops to stretch what little he’s been given. To that, there are times when he’s able to break through and utilize the inherent emotion of his character’s situation, dropping a few tears and trying to find a purpose in it all. Though it’s never long after these moments that something explodes, a gun gets shot, or a scream echoes in the distance, pulling him, and us, away from the only semblance of feeling that the film is able to extract.
Even in those more promising moments, though, the dialogue is really rough. There isn’t a line in this entire film that isn’t borrowed. Many of them feel ripped from some of the lesser ‘Call of Duty’ campaigns, while others feel like they could’ve been A.I. generated. Which is fitting for the Joe Russo, who recently came out in support of inhuman screenwriting. Perhaps he’s gotten sneaky and went ahead and given it a test-run with this one.
Either way, none of this feels real. The human characters and their arcs are flat, as well are the environments in which they all aimlessly spin. Everything looks grey and glazed-over with a fake, metallic feel, and as a result, none of the building-crashing, wheel-spinning, and fire-bombing land with any sort of gravitas. It’s all weightless, at least everything beyond the first act. The fabled 20-ish minute one-take towards the beginning is actually pretty thrilling.
That scene feels like it belongs in a different movie. Having just established the stakes, yet not having been inundated with the soon-to-come mountains of poor exposition and stolen character beats, the tension is high. Hemsworth barrels his way through countless walls of man-fodder, using every violent method in his arsenal to get to the end. It’s very point A to point B, sure, but it just rips all the way there.
The sequence begins in the night and continues as the sun rises, and by the time it ends, all track of time and space is lost and that is more than okay. These movies are at their best when they exist only as machines for their well-engineered chaos. If director Sam Hargrave went and turned this franchise into 45-minute action-driven short films, they’d likely work a lot better. There simply isn’t enough story to substantiate the madness in a full feature.
That issue results in an uneven pace with needless skids and halts. The madness is the magic, especially when it works like it does in this first act. Extraction 2 is style over substance because it tries to substantiate it’s style; if it just committed to the style being the substance, we’d probably be in a much different situation right now. Alas, this is what we’ve got.
What we’ve got will likely be all we’ve ever get from these movies as well, it seems. Hardcore action fans may find more to like in this one than many, but even then, how much mindless movement and noisy insanity can one take? Extraction 2 is one of the year’s biggest disappointments thus far. Throw it on in the background, maybe watch the trailers to catch some of that action, but beyond that, this is a tough two-hour commitment to justify it’s existence.
Extraction 2 is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Extraction 2 is one of the year's biggest disappointments thus far. Throw it on in the background, maybe watch the trailers to catch some of that action, but beyond that, this is a tough two-hour commitment to justify it's existence.
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GVN Rating 3
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