2023-06-25 22:05:25
For the second time in this decade.. and the third in 15 years.. and the fourth in two decades, a movie comes out that bears the characteristics of modern action cinema that was born in the 21st century. A mid-budget movie with a violent adventure and a character named John Rambo, Jason Bourne or John Wick, the three have common features: a killer who has withdrawn / retired from the field, but circumstances force him to return.
He suffers from a sad past, such as the tragic death of a wife or son, and the character is played by an actor with cold or harsh features who receives hundreds of blows to the head, face, and abdomen, gets shot or stabbed, or suffers a concussion from a grenade explosion.. and yet he continues to fight.
Forty years ago, the circumstances were the shameful exit from Vietnam, which was reflected in the muscles of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris in the eighties. Then action cinema was renewed with the entry of the resourceful John McClane (Bruce Willis), who defeats his enemies from the remnants of the Communists with a gun and intelligence instead of muscles.
Then Jason Bourne entered the new millennium, brought realism into the post-9/11 era, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and dominated the entire decade. Then John Wick came in, completing what Bourne had begun with an artistic style second to none. And now we have “Extraction”, which took the two characters and made a separate path. “Extraction” returns today with a second part, after the great success of the first part on the “Netflix” platform in the first quarter of 2020.
Sad hero
What we are witnessing here is the phenomenon of the sad hero killer, and Chris Hemsworth is a new addition to action cinema, and the hero of the story, Tyler Rick, gives a touch that makes him real, especially if we know that the movie was adapted by Joe Russo – one of the architects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – from comics.
Hemsworth has a graceful body and macho muscles, like Stallone and Schwarzenegger in their glory days, but he also enjoys a wider range of them in impersonating characters, and we saw him in various roles before this movie. Hemsworth has a sad look on his face that gives this movie a special character.
Teller was a Special Forces member of the Australian Army who chose to go to Afghanistan while his son was battling an illness and was not present when his son died. Then, his marriage ended and he decided to quit his job and become a mercenary.
Teller’s guilt over his failure to abide by the duties of marriage and parenthood is the driving force of the “Extraction” series, just as amnesia was the driving force of the “Bourne” series, and just as mourning is the driving force of the “John Wick” series.
Teller’s adventures are action redemption stories, in which he encounters versions of himself: fathers who abuse, neglect or push their children into life-threatening decisions, and his enemies are evil fathers who let their families down.
In the first movie, we saw Teller rescue the kidnapped son of an Indian drug lord in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. Teller accepts the mission to forgive his past wrongdoing (in the comic, Tyler goes to Paraguay, South America) and Teller treats the boy like his own son.
In this film, we see Tyler in Austria convalescing when a man with no name enters him, or maybe his name is Alcott (Idris Elba). Alcott informs Teller that the latter’s ex-wife wants him to save her existing sister, against her will with her husband, Davitt (Tornick Bziava), who is imprisoned in a Georgia prison for killing a drug enforcement officer. Here we learn that Teller was married to a Georgian woman who was embodied in the Ukrainian film, Olga Kurylenko.
Tyler must get his sister-in-law, son and daughter away from Davitt and his brother Zurab, two drug lords who control Georgia and two brutal killers. Of course, things get complicated and all you have to know is that you will watch three long action shots that are the entire movie and have some room for character development.
Mashhad 21 minutes
The first shot: a full 21-minute action scene without cuts, which is the scene of the escape of Tyler and the family he is assigned to rescue from prison, and then they board a train chased by helicopters loaded with gunmen wearing bulletproof vests. The scene involves Teller throwing a petrol bomb at him, which he counters with a shield, but his right sleeve catches fire and he fights with a burning hand. Yes, the scene that took a whole month to shoot is real, and director Sam Hargrave set Hemsworth’s hand on real fire.
The fight continues on the train, and Teller’s allies, Nick (Iranian-French Golshifteh Farahani) and Yaz (Tunisian-French Adam Bessa), join him, and the fight continues with firearms, knives, punches, and any object thrown on the ground.
Hargrave is a risky role actor who collaborated with Hemsworth in “Marvel” films in the past decade, and moved to directing, as was the case with Chad Stahelski, who was a risky role actor in “The Matrix” with Keanu Reeves and collaborated with them in “John Wick”.
Hargrave follows his own line, leaving aesthetics and low shots to Stahelski and employing shots that are very close to action in a way that Paul Greengrass did not do in the “Bourne” series.
Greengrass was a documentary director and employed the shaky camera style in action, while Hargrave makes the camera semi-fixed behind or beside the hero and moves with the hero’s movement and strikes, and the style is closer to the method of video games. If the hero receives a hit, the movement of the camera will be affected, as if the hit was in it, and so on.
The second and third takes are modeled on John McTiernan’s Die Hard and John Wu’s Chinese film The Killer in 1988 and 1989 respectively. In the second, a building is besieged and fighting takes place in and around it, and in the third, the final battle is transferred to a church.
As a reminder, if you are looking for drama, you will not find it here, because “Extraction 2” focuses on providing more, bigger, and more intense action than its predecessor. As a reminder, this is a “Netflix” movie, not a cinema, which means that this is an internet platform movie and not a Hollywood production. This is for the reader to understand how the film industry has changed in less than a decade.
Also, as a reminder, writer Joe Russo, director Hargrave, and hero Hemsworth were together in the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they all moved from the magnitude of that production and the most profitable film in history to a modest production compared to “Marvel” and from the big screen to the small screen. This is for the reader to understand that the “Extraction” series created a new line in action cinema, and that moving from one huge project to another smaller one does not necessarily mean a retreat.
Views increase
The cinema may be a better place to show a movie like “Extraction 2”, but “Netflix” responded to this opinion by increasing its investment in action films, and as soon as the platform announced this movie, the number of views of other action films increased on it.
• If you are looking for a drama, you will not find it here, because the film focuses on presenting more and more action than its predecessor.
• Chris Hemsworth has a sad look on his face that gives this movie a special character.
• 3 long action shots is the entire movie, with some room for character development.
1687733054
#Extraction #reviews #action #style #long #shots