Extraction review – efficient thriller needed a dollop of self-awareness

So it is here with the unashamedly loud and unsubtle Netflix thriller Extraction that Hollywood finally meets its most ridiculous action hero name yet. Meet “Tyler Rake,” a brooding Aussie mercenary-for-hire defined entirely by Chris Hemsworth's good looks. The script is by one half of the Avengers: Endgame's Russo brothers (and on this basis, Joe is not the funny one), though the film is produced by both siblings, and marks the directorial debut of stunt co-ordinator Sam Hargrave, who knows how to shoot weighty, efficient action, even if he's interested in little else.

This is essentially a straight-to-DVD Steven Seagel thriller with the budget of a blockbuster. There is no pre-amble; in the first minute alone Tyler Rake has killed two people and now lays dying on a bridge. But how did he get there, and why – like in all movies that require a traumatic shorthand – is he hallucinating a fuzzy flashback of a young child on a beach? We discover the answer, two days' previous, when a seemingly simple extraction mission in yellow-tinted Bangladesh goes south and our man Rake, hired to secure the release of a rich crime lord's son (Rudraksh Jaiswal), is quickly pounced upon by an army of never-ending henchman.

It's the sort of movie that crashes from scene to scene, in which everyone – even the children – clings to guns and serve as cannon fodder for the invincible hero. Yet you have to wonder: why so serious? Didn't we agree a while back that Chris Hemsworth is a gifted comic actor, far more interesting when he's cracking jokes and making fun of his ridiculous good looks? There's a reason we remember him in Thor and that Ghostbusters remake and not in… well, you get the point.

The plot might have been plucked from basically any airport paperback, but lacks the self-awareness of that kind of breezy thriller. At one point, an extended scene in which David Harbour turns up as an “old friend” in order to commit a truly tired formulaic function threatens to derail the entire thing. But leaning heavily on the cliches (the tortured Rake will of course come to bond with his new companion), Extraction is less about why anything is happening and more about where the next broken skull is coming from.

Is it fun? The answer is: sort of. If you can brush aside everything that's wrong with Extraction, from its mistreatment of exotic locales to its paper thin protagonist (and many, understandably, won't find the capacity), it's entertaining in a mindless, overblown way, like The Raid as directed by Tony Scott. And there is something appealing in the simple idea of watching such relentless blunt trauma being unleashed with a single-minded competence.

The undeniable highlight, as intended, is a “one-shot” action sequence that lasts 11 minutes, Hemsworth and his new sidekick moving in and out of vehicles, through shanty towns, dodging gunfire and engaging in fisticuffs – a set-piece the rest of the movie seems to have been built around. It's impressive, hard-hitting stuff, though the edits aren't quite as invisible as in, say, 1917, and afterwards Extraction fails to reach the same levels of intensity until its explosive, bridge-set finale. Next time, how about service with a smile?

Extraction is now streaming on Netflix.