Extraction is a lot to talk about.

One should watch this film with an understanding that this is yet another film directed by a stunt coordinator, much like John Wick. So, there is not much to be expected in terms of story or characters.

With this in mind, we encounter our first problem - Chris Hemsworth is very much miscast for the role. He looks ripped and all cool, he can do stunts, but he is too typecast as a good guy superhero to represent a generic washed up mercenary with no will to live. Also, and this is my personal humble opinion, he is not a good dramatic actor.

This is where we find our third problem - the story is incredibly generic and unimaginative. You can easily spell out the dialogue before the characters do, just because you've heard it a million times.

The film is a remarkably interesting combination of stunt ideas and cool scenes, mixed with inspirations and copypastas from other films, even the ones the director and the writer worked on together.

What sucks is that all of these feel watered down, not even one of these borrows really works out in the end. The emotional connection base of a hired assassin and a kid who has no real family (for the assassin to become one for him) could not be done better than in Leon (1994) (or the Professional). The crime mogul intent on training a heir to replace him in time was also done before (but I can't recall now when and where), but in this film this plot goes absolutely nowhere, it just stops (while it could've been something interesting). The ending was also very reminiscent of the ending of Leon btw. The old friend subplot was super obvious, but it still felt like it was borrowed from 16 Blocks (2006). Some of the visuals of the film were inspired by John Wick (2014), Children of Men (2006) (the car chase), the shooting style of the action was reminiscent of 1917 (2019), the "drowning in the water" scenes were ripped straight out of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) (interestingly enough, the director of Extraction was a stunt double for Chris Evans, even the music from these scenes was very similar because it was composed by the same composer.

I can go on and on, but I think by now you get the point.

Anyway, even well shot action scenes still need a script. They don't work without a good story, they just get tiresome and kinda boring, this was very well demonstrated by Michael Bay's 6 Underground (2019).

There are lots of reviews of Bangladesh nationals who were offended by the portrayal of the country and the capital, but I'm not one of them (this is why filmmakers tend to use fictional locations).

Besides the action scenes, I also loved that this film had that amateur quality to it, like lots of slow scenes that don't really go anywhere, but they just look smart.

You also don't see Hellboy brawl with Thor very often, not even talking about Thor kicking and punching kids around.

Interesting film in terms of how much they've put into it, still feels like a third person shooter video game with bosses and enemy respawns. Clearly not the worst of the stunt-directed kind.

Easy watch if you're bored, but don't forget to disable your brain first.