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(Sorry, just gonna re-post my Letterboxd review here; if you liked the first one, no reason not to sprint to the couch to watch this one as well)
The first movie had a great deal of fun paying homage to both John Wick and The Raid as it told a taut, low stakes tale of a high stakes mission to remove a high value target from a warzone.It's charm was as vivid as it was spare: analog action cinema has leveled up, and we're sorry Marvel has relegated it to second fiddle regardless.
Sam Hargrave, the Russos and Thor return to Extraction knowing exactly what the people want, and for better or worse that's exactly what they deliver. One of the greatest gifts an action movie can give the viewer is an imperceptible passage of time, and Extraction 2 delivers an hour and a half of movie remarkably quickly before losing a bit of steam in the final act.
I get why some are disbelievers in the cult of the one-shot, particularly in a post-Birdman world where they've become so easy to fake that they can feel like peacocking as much a masterstroke of cinematic choreography. But both Extraction movies are stalwart examples of the benefits of a good, muscular extended sequence, with this movie in particular placing its take so early in the film that by the time it's over, I'm sure almost everyone who's watched it will feel like the movie was almost outlined in reverse, climaxing strangely early.
I'm just a sucker for the technique, that's all there is to it, and I honestly wished the "2" in the title promised just as many bravura escort missions rather than a single, doubly long (and equally breathless) event. The rest of the action is equally visceral, though at times it can feel a little gratuitous, similar to the way Netflix's The Night Comes for Us occasionally felt more like a fanboy's backyard tribute to Philippine action cinema as the real deal.
Enjoying this movie is also going to require a ready stomach for all the contrivances of Action Movie 101 screenwriting because the story they're telling - and, sadly, they do try to tell a story here in between set pieces - is total nonsense outside the narrow frame of "this is how we tell stories in action movies", making for a movie that's bloated by at least a half hour by conversations that mean very little and character motivations that are established more firmly by ammunition and fists than dialogue.
This franchise will probably never be as clever as the predecessors that inspired it (there's also a bit of Bond and Mission Impossible going on here) and the charm of seeing Thor do actual, real deal fight scenes can't possibly hit a second time, but I will always have room in my life for an action franchise that commits to its bit, and when it comes to visceral EXTRACTION one shots and clever cinematic executions (I'm a particular fan of the treadmill spot) Hargrave is two for two. Let's keep handing stuntmen the director's chair.
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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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