Extraction

There's a moment early on in Extraction when a fella called Tyler Rake (no really) kills another fella by ramming the prongs of a rake through his face. If that's not nominative determinism hitting it's apex then I don't know what is.

Ovi Mahajan Jr (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) has just seen his best friend murdered in front of him. His trauma is magnified ten fold when he's then kidnapped and held for ransom by Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli), Bangladesh's number one drug kingpin and all round nasty bit of stuff. Ovi's father, Ovi Sr, is India's biggest drug kingpin but currently in jail and can't afford the ransom so an Australian mercenary, Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is hired to get the boy back. Also on the hunt for the boy is Saju (Randeep Hooda), Ovi Sr's main man, who's worried about incurring the wrath of his employer. Rake and Saju are on a collision course for each other in the middle of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, a city about to be put into lockdown by Amir Asif.

One of the best things about Netflix is the fact it doesn't have to worry about box office takings. As such it doesn't really have to worry about alienating audiences either. Because Extraction is going to alienate audiences. It's an extremely violent movie, one which may horrify young Chris Hemsworth fans used to him bloodlessly batting away CGI bad buys with his magic hammer Mjolnir. He slashes, stabs, bludgeons and headshots his way across the city and the cumulative effect is a brutal watch that will see many viewers dropping away before the film even hits it's half way point.

Unless, like myself, you grew up on the wildly violent action movies of the 80's and 90's. Well then you're going to have a whale of a time. Director Sam Hargrave, stuntman and stunt co-ordinators for action heavy flicks like Atomic Blonde, Avengers Endgame, Captain America : Civil War and Jason Statham's The Mechanic has made the most of his first time in the director's chair and turned out a film Arnie or Sly would be proud to call their own. The film comes with all the stupidity you'd expect to see in those films too, the bad guys being terrible shots and the good guys soaking up bullets and knives and moving on with no hassle. One thing it has thankfully (kind of) avoided is the cultural insensitivity those films reveled in. Yes, the main good guy is a tortured caucasian hunk ™ but the film gives plenty of time and a little bit of depth to Saju as well. He might be a one man killing machine but at least he's given a reason for his actions and he's a way more interesting character than Rake who's most notable characteristic is his ridiculous name. Randeep Hooda, a big name in Indian cinema is one to keep an eye on. Like Tony Jaa in Ong Bak and Iko Uwais in The Raid, this could be the role that brings him to world wide attention.

Hemsworth can do this action stuff in his sleep and his physicality combined with Hargrave's skill with action gives us a couple of fantastically visceral moments. The first, an up close and personal smackdown in a cramped apartment is clearly modeled on the blisteringly violent action films coming out of South East Asia in the last decade and the second, an 11 minute long one take shot (not really, you can see the joins, but the effect is brilliant) of a car chase that turns into an apartment block massacre is the kind of stuff action film fans crave. Vicious, inventive, crunchy, the kind of film making that makes the Marvel movies Hargrave is known best for look painfully dull.

If you like your movies subtle and understated avoid this like the plague. If you crave a bloody boy's own adventure you'll enjoy this. You'll even get to see one of the highest paid actors in the world beat up a group of children. An oddly unique selling point!