Extraction

There’s a strange contemporary trend – making action movies with good actors but without emotion. Which is a pity in this case, because Chris Hemsworth usually knows how to crack jokes, like he showed us in Thor. If he got some space for that, instead of just massacring left and right like Robocop, it could have been the best action blockbuster of the decade. As it is, it’s just an average action flick with one delicious chase in the middle, where the camera was working magic and I was just gaping at the screen with my mouth hanging open. (29/04/2020)

After Triple Frontier, another likeably uncompromising and gritty action flick from Netflix. The choreography and direction are so predatory and imaginative that there are several scenes that I wanted to rewatch immediately after the credits rolled, and I did. The story is simple, but it also manages to surprise with one unusual, yet logical alliance in particular, and the quiet ending didn't bother me at all, quite the opposite – I felt like I needed a breather. I trusted Chris Hemsworth with everything. (25/04/2020)

Who gives a crap about a more sophisticated script – that’s not my issue here – but this is merely two hours of systematically emptying bottomless clips without any display of emotion whatsoever. But what about the praises sung on this site about the 15-minute “continuous take”?  Well, when you make clever use of cuts (by zooming into macro details for an instant, right in the face) and unnoticeable dissolves, you can fill an entire feature-length film with such takes (just ask Sam Mendes), though it is of course all an illusion, even though it looks cool. To sum up, this is nothing new under the sun, just another yawn-inducing flick no one will remember three months from now. (29/04/2020)

A bit of John Wick, a bit of The Raid, and an awfully ordinary plot. It’s still good stuff, though. Hemsworth handles the action decently and isn't afraid of the more daring stunts, which is commendable. Extraction does wink at Evans from behind the scenes, but it can be considered another in a long line of flashy action flicks. Especially the car chase scene in one take, or running around a house – these are first class stunts. I was tempted to believe that it was an unrecognizably made-up Rose Byrne in a cool Indian look, but it wasn't. (26/04/2020)

Thanks to being set in a convincingly dirty environment, Liam Hemsworth's muscle mass, and the fantastic pace where one attraction is swapped out for another, the adventures of the hero with the super tough name Tyler Rake landed in terms of mood one or two classes more higher than the much praised and often compared John Wick. The combination of mercenaries, the desperate fates of children of soldiers of fortune, and the action-packed aspects polished to the last cut compensate for the fact that this does not offer (nor does it seek to offer) anything new to the classical screenplay. (21/05/2020)