[Review] Extraction(2020) {6.5/10}

Directed by Sam Hargrave (in his feature directorial debut) with a screenplay from Joe Russo, the film stars Chris Hemsworth (Tyler Rake), Randeep Hooda (Saju Rav), Golshifteh Farahani (Nik Khan), Rudhraksh Jaiswal (Ovi Mahajan), Pankaj Tripathi (Ovi Mahajan Sr.), David Harbour (Gaspar) and Priyanshu Painyuli (Amir Asif). It is based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks, Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Fernando León González, and Eric Skillman.

The plot follows Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth), who is a mercenary living in the Australian Outback, drinking too much and trying to forget his past. When Ovi Mahajan Jr. (Rudhraksh Jaiswal ), teen son of imprisoned Indian drug kingpin Ovi Mahajan Sr. (Pankaj Tripathi ) is kidnapped and held for ransom by Amir (Priyanshu Painyuli ), the biggest drug lord in Bangladesh, Rake is offered the mission to rescue the teen and return him to safety. Desperate for money, and finding little worth living for, Rake accepts the mission and soon lands in Dhaka. After escaping a kidnap attempt by Amir's crew and then rescuing Ovi, Rake must fight against not only more of Amir's people, but also the police and military authorities paid off by Amir, and Ovi's former bodyguard, who might also be trying to steal Ovi from Rake in order to protect his own family. In the midst of this carnage, Rake begins to feel an unexpected paternal care for Ovi that extends beyond the mission, even when an old mercenary pal of Rake's tells him that they can kill Ovi and collect a $10 million reward. Now Rake must try to survive the consequences of his decision, and get Ovi to the extraction point to safety: a bridge between Bangladesh and India.

While the one-take battle sequences are exciting and impressive, the overall story is a shopworn formula from beginning to end. The hero is both strong and silent, and he's also conflicted between the lucrative mission and the pangs of his conscience. Extraction tries to add a third dimension to this action hero through the untimely death of a young son, but it feels as forced and obligatory as scenes in which the bad guys are shown to be bad by throwing kids off of roofs. Overall, the movie feels more like a first-person shooter game than a movie, and even with the requisite plot twists and expected betrayals, what ultimately emerges is the constant barrage of urban warfare in a developing country. The best thing in the movie is the chemistry between Hemsworth and Rudhraksh Jaiswal, who does an excellent job of playing a teen trying to live a normal life but caught in a traumatic situation due to circumstances far beyond his control. It's fine for action-movie escapist fare, but throughout, one gets the feeling that the movie wouldn't have been that much different if they had just dispensed with a story altogether.

Extraction is now available on Netflix.