Extraction (2020)
Embark on the most deadly extraction of his career
If I’m being honest, I watched this movie when it first came out. I thought I had already done a review for it back when I watched it, but in typical me fashion I either live in a computer-world where my AI overlords are constantly altering things to mess with me, or I just thought I did and didn’t per norms. We’ve got some action, we’ve got some emotional strings, we got all sorts of things - including some fun facts that I learned on making of’s and that fun Stuntmen Reacts on YouTube. Get the crew together, it’s time to get to Extraction.
The story is a rescue story at it’s core, with a whole lot of things built on top. We have the main hero’s emotional core of something that happened in his past that’s got him that tragic side to him. We’ve got our bad-good hero, whose motivated by more criminal “family at risk” reasons. We’ve got a mild bit of the crime-boss’s kid and his relation to his dad, and we’ve got this big old criss-cross of deceit and action between them all. It hits the emotional cords you would want out of it, and can feel pretty elaborate even if you could boil it on down to “rescue the kid from the city of evil” kind of thing.
The actors do good. You certainly believe most the emotional and physical states the actors are in - including the kid. Deliveries are good, and there isn’t any real lines that feel phoned in. The closest you might get is a few conversations that although good and solid for the movie might feel out of place coming out of a late-night conversation. Minor nitpick that, but between the three main characters of the movie, they do a wonderful job of getting more to it than just typical cookie cutter action flick. That said, the physical bits - be it stuntmen or the actors themselves - also comes of real well.
The characters aren’t bad. They give some depth to the main with the tragic past, and the kid gets some little quirks here and there that helps build out his relationship that forms between him and his savior. Even the “bad-good” hero has enough to him that despite coming off as a baddie you know his heart is in the right place regardless of making the wrong calls. The side characters also get moments to be built out at least in an archetypal manner so that they - or at least three or four of them - feel a bit more like people who have feelings of some sort towards others. It sets up a lot of payoffs between the dynamics, and you’ll find yourself with characters in the solid love/hate camp as well as the very conflicted camp. Logic calls from characters don’t feel superficial - the kid could have, for example, been a little butt head and constantly caused trouble for the main hero, but instead he makes perfectly logical choices and does what he’s told. Is the actors or the writing behind how good they are? Probably both really, an ideal situation.
Extraction crew.
But it isn’t all about line deliveries and believable actions, this is an action movie. We’ve got plenty of attire to look at - and arguably most is really just modern attire, although some is a bit more interesting just given it’s not the standard fair American attire that I would see on a normal day to day. Of course, you do get plenty of tactical outfits - both on the mercenary, cop, military, and sneaky side of things. More noticeable features on characters tend to be a much more giving tell to who a character is over just the attire, but you can follow everything on screen and who it is perfectly fine. The setting also provides plenty of mixes - indoors, outdoors, cramped and open, even some woods.
The action scenes are solid as heck. Yes, the astute might actually notice that sometimes recoil from gun fights seems a little lackluster - but considering all the guns the used on location were the rubberized prop ones (couldn’t import the real deals), I feel like most the time you don’t even notice it with how its shot. The fisticuffs are pretty brutal and fun from the fight choreography, and although it might not be everyone’s cup of tea i love how impactful some of the hits are. There’s also a large mix of the stuff - gun fights, fist fights, knife fights, car chases and crashes - it’s all sorts of thing. I had a good time with it the first time, and a good time with it the second time. Perhaps a few moments are less stellar than others, but it’s pretty solid regardless.
The audio is well balanced. There are lines that I can’t understand do to a language gap, but the subtitles fill me in on what they are saying so I don’t miss anything. Line deliveries are good, and all the action sounds are pretty solid. It’s got plenty of living sounds to make it feel like a populated place, so there really isn’t much I’d fault the audio department for. You do get plenty of auxiliary things to dive into for the folks looking more for drama than action, what with different relations between characters and their motivations. That said, although the movie might spark a thought about how kid-crime workers and soldiers could be a bad thing, it’s not like the movie is specifically trying to drive home those points as much as using it as an element of the story.
Extreme stuns.
I enjoyed it multiple times now, so I don’t think I can sell it as anything but enjoyable. From what I can tell, the watching crew also quite enjoyed it. Yeah, there’s some parts that might upset some folks with more acute eyesight or attention to details, but overall it’s a finely crafted movie. Good cinematography, intense fight choreography, varied scene settings and types of action on screen all mixed in with some emotional threads and a solidly complicated but easy to follow plot makes it a good time spent.