I didn't expect much from this movie. The Netflix tag still doesn't quite instill confidence despite their recent successful hits, and the action genre is one rife with hit and miss entries. I've already read quite a bit of feedback on this movie, and I feel like there's one key point they're all missing; this is a mindless action movie. Judging it on the merits of being a deep, thought-provoking character study is unfair. However judging it on the merits of being a balls-to-the-wall action flick, there's actually a lot here to redeem itself and set it apart from other attempts.

Okay, there isn't much plot to Extraction. The entire story is summarised in the movie's title. Hemsworth plays a mercenary; Tyler, who's sent to Bangladesh in order to extract a drug-lord's son from the possession of a rival drug-lord. The entire city goes on lockdown and Tyler has to fight his way through henchmen and a corrupt police force in order to get out. There's some nice twists here and there from changing allegiances, and a few points of foreshadowing and plot payoffs, but there's nothing that requires you to really wrap your brain around it, and honestly that's okay. This isn't Inception. Truth be told Extraction has a lot more plot (from the aforementioned allegiance switches and payoffs) than I expected, so I feel like calling it mindless is a little baseless.

Another thing about Extraction that plays against the dull and plot-less complaints is the character work. Again this isn't a full-on character study, and the background development we do get is a little cliché, but it's way more than your average run-of-the-mill action flick usually gets to enjoy. Tyler is a broken man after the death of his son and the breakdown of his marriage. He spends his days getting drunk and doing death-defying feats for fun. He has no more love of life. He doesn't get into the job because he cares about the kid or anyone involved. He just wants his money. But being haunted by the death of his son ends up making him more sympathetic to the fate of this kid, and as the movie goes on, the money means less to him. He just wants to get this kid out safe and alive.

But Tyler isn't the only one that enjoys a hefty amount of personality. The movie also makes a bit to explore other more fringe characters, the most notable of which is Saju, the kids keeper after his father was incarcerated. With assets frozen, he can't afford to pay the mercenaries what he owes, so he tries to finish the job himself, against them. We get a look into his family life and his motivations behind his actions, and sit with him in the downtimes between action sequences. He becomes as much the lead character as Tyler does, earning respect and sympathy from the audience. You end up really rooting for this guy even as him and Tyler sparr off. We also get a small glimpse into the world of the antagonist drug-lord, showing us how despicable he really is by casually killing kids without a care, and brainwashing those left over to work for him. Extraction is brutal to its kids, but it plays to Tyler's predisposition and creates a much tighter and meaningful narrative than many give it credit for.

But Extraction isn't about its plot or its characters, even though I feel those aspects are being unfairly criticised. Extraction is an action movie, directed by an ex-stuntman, starring muscled action stars from across the globe. In fact on that last point I particularly liked the movie's dedication to casting people roughly from the same area their character is meant to be from (or I guess vice versa; rewriting characters to fit the actor's background). Tyler is Australian, David Harbour plays a grizzled American on foreign soil, Nik is played by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, and while most the Bangladeshi characters are actually played by Indian actors, it's at least closer than most Hollywood casting. I particularly hope this opens up more Western opportunities for Randeep Hooda who played Saju, oozing charisma and cool without speaking a word, and effortlessly earning audience sympathies.

But anyway, horrific tangent aside, Extraction is about its action sequences, and on that it certainly doesn't fail. This is another movie in the likes of John Wick and Atomic Blonde that prefers its action gritty and efficient. There's style here for sure, but it rarely breaks suspension of disbelief, and we see real consequences for all the hits these characters take. Tyler takes time bandaging his arm and putting it in a sling, Saju has to put his broken nose back into place, and David Harbour offers probably the most realistic reaction to being shot in the chest I've seen in a long time. There's no flying acrobatics, and no artistic flailing of limbs to make the choreography look pretty. It's brutal and efficient fighting, showing how exhausting it can all be. Ammo counts and reloading matters, getting punched in the face is different to being kicked in the gut, being run-over by a car hurts. And this is before mentioning the soon to be most-talked-about 12-minute long shot action scene that spans car chases, knife fights, gun fights, and apartment brawls, following multiple characters and different perspectives with seamless match-cuts to give the illusion of a neverending single shot.

But the action isn't a complete winner, and there are reasons I'm apprehensive to label it as 'realistic'. Certain objects come out of nowhere for no reason just for excitement purposes, like high-speed cars heading down a dead-end. While there's no flying around, there are some cable stunts that are a little hard to swallow, like Tyler grabbing a kid by the leg and effortlessly throwing him into a car door. There's also a number of sniper moments that feel like they take too many liberties with how sniping works. Normally this would be pernickety even for me, but for a movie that wallows in it's accurate portrayal of gun fights, from injuries to the differentiation of sounds (pistols make more of a 'pah' sound, for instance), giving sniper superhuman abilities like seeing round corners and 100% accuracy just felt little lazy. In any other action movie I probably wouldn't have minded these slip-ups so much, but when the rest of it is all so tightly choreographed and mapped out, slipping up and breaking believability becomes so much more noticeable.

In some regards, Extraction is just an average, run-of-the-mill action flick, and in others it's up there with some of the genre's modern greats. There are stakes, characters have emotional backbones even if they are a little cliché, there aren't any deeper themes, but the narrative is still tight and focussed, the action is more phenomenal than it is irksome, the cinematography is a little bland, the soundtrack can feel like a rip-off of better scores, but these kinds of motifs are iconic because they work so well. I find Extraction a hard one to judge because it feels greater than it has any right to be, while also hitting just shy of the mark. But generally I fall positive, so I give Extraction a respectable 7/10, and honestly I could see myself bumping it up with subsequent rewatches. There's a lot in this movie to like.