So my co-writer, co-conspirator, funder and friend Charonib, very much indulged me in this piece because it wasn’t part of the bunch that he commissioned for this Netflix Year event. I wasn’t sure about what to do with the movie, but I felt it’d be fun to talk about “Extraction”. How to do so or what concept to go with wasn’t really important. So I thought it’d be funny to recreate what would happen after any of the action scenes in the movie, the aftermath of Chris Hemsworth going around shooting bad guys in the face. It then occurred to me that giving her a Nerf gun would only make things funnier. How in the world did things get so bad using just Nerf guns? Well I’ve been in a few Nerf battles, it does get like this and it’s great.

Also unapologetic “Donald Glover walks in with Pizzas and all is on fire” meme energy in this one. I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to recreate it.

So “Extraction” was…alright. I think I could end the entire review right there at that sentence, but it’d be disingenuous of me to do so. It’s going to be a short one regardless. This movie had a ton of good buzz going about it, mostly from fans of the film on Twitter and other platforms. I was mildly interested since the other project produced by the Russo Brothers, “21 Bridges”, turned out to be quite a dang good film. So I went into this one open minded, ready to have a good time. And I did have a good time, and the movie has a bunch of great set pieces, crown jewel of them being that one-shot action scene that starts outside the city and ends in an spectacular explosion under a bridge, going through houses, buildings, and over rooftops. It’s a remarkable sequence really well put together, and the action stays grounded, realistic, and easy to follow.

But the flaws of “Extraction” come in how simple it is while also taking itself way too seriously. I only recall one joke in the entire movie. The characters, while acted by very likeable actors, don’t have very little depth to themselves. It’s commendable that Chris Hemsworth is doing more movies outside of his Thor persona, playing a relatively dramatic character, but he’s coming dangerously close from getting stuck as your likeable meathead who’s here to do a good job shooting bad guys with his gun. I appreciate the open ending, but in this sort of movie it almost comes across as confused, and like something that sneaked in from a Dennis Villeneuve film.

In short, “Extraction” tries to be both “Rambo” and “Sicario” at the same time, and while the action parts are executed really cleanly, the more character focused parts aren’t developed enough to justify the serious tone and the morose nature of the direction.