2020 was an undeniably rough time for the movies — but thanks to the power of streaming, it was also a great year for a chosen few. Netflix’s Extraction was already a promising project for the streamer: Chris Hemsworth was in the lead, and Marvel’s Joe and Anthony Russo were producing what looked to be a high-octane action flick akin to the Russos’ Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
The success was in the numbers: according to the streamer itself, Extraction reached almost 100 million households within a month of its streaming premiere. Whether you trust in Netflix’s nebulous metrics or prefer to take things with a grain of salt, the demand for the film was hard to ignore — and it certainly merited a sequel.
Even before Extraction 2 was greenlit in May 2020, a followup to the Sam Hargrave-directed thriller felt like a sure thing. Hemsworth starred as Tyler Rake, a competent mercenary tasked with rescuing the son of an Indian drug lord. Though Rake sustained what should have been a fatal injury in the final moments of Extraction, the idea of his survival wasn’t exactly farfetched. Hargrave and the Russos made sure to leaves his fate up to interpretation, and that decision’s clearly paid off for Extraction 2. Hemsworth’s mercenary is back in a new teaser trailer, and he’s already hard at work protecting a new client.
The Extraction 2 teaser may be short, but Hargrave and Hemsworth manage to make a meal out of it. One of the highlights of the first film came from Hargrave’s creative direction, particularly when it came to the extended action setpieces. That’s to be expected from a stuntman-turned-director — just look at all that Chad Stahelski and David Leitch have done with the John Wick films, Atomic Blonde, and Bullet Train. A few sequences in Extraction were shot and edited to create the illusion of a single take, and that trend continues in the sequel. The teaser reintroduces us to Rake in his natural habitat: he’s back on the job, and this time breaking the daughter of a Georgian gangster out of prison.
Staging a prison break is no small feat, but having to fight your way out is another. Rake is also clearly reckoning with his near-death when we finally catch up to him in Extraction 2. According to a yet unknown ally, Rake was “clinically dead” nine months before the events of the sequel. He managed to fight his way back to the land of the living, evidently to pull off this latest mission.
The question on everyone’s mind now is, “Why?” What pulled him back from the brink, and what made him jump back into the fray so quickly? That mystery will definitely be a driving force for Rake in Extraction 2, but the film isn’t skimping on the action this time either. Come for the existentialism, stay to watch Hemsworth wail on faceless henchmen with his arm on fire.
