Extraction 2 (2023) Dir: Sam Hargrave

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I had recently this film's 2020 predecessor, which was one of the most watched Netflix films ever, and found it to be an entertaining, if a little generic, action film. It was my hope that this Netflix Original sequel, once more directed by Sam Hargrave, would have more of the great action I had enjoyed previously, and hopefully a little more in the way of a story.

Visually speaking, I found this way more impressive than the first film, which is pretty commendable, considering that the two films had similar budgets. There were more excellent tracking shots and one-shots, one of which lasted over twenty minutes, these made for some thrilling scenes. The action was once again excellent, with the very fast paced and intense action sequences being the real strength of these films yet again.

The story had its moments, but it was still a very typical action narrative, complete with bland, stereotypical, Eastern European villains with very little in the way of personality beyond thuggish bad guy tropes. There were some decent family based themes going on amongst the chaos, but the main focus of the film was, unsurprisingly, the violence.

Chris Hemsworth provided a similarly solid performance to the one he turned in for the first film. He plays the rugged and scarred mercenary well, and made his many action scenes look effortlessly smooth. I still wouldn't call his acting particularly inspiring in nature, but I do think this was, on the face of it, an improvement on his display in the prior film, in fairness.

I was so pleased by the return and substantially increased screentime of Golshifteh Farahani, who was heavily underutilised in the first film. I thought that her performance was pretty good, and I enjoyed seeing more of her character, particularly in how she interacted with Hemsworth's. She had some really good action sequences, especially in the final third of the film.

Tornike Gogrichiani made the most of his fairly unremarkable antagonist character, but it was still a fairly uphill battle. I feel like there was a much better antagonist in there, and Gogrichiani wasn't far from bringing him out, but he couldn't quite manage it. Regardless, his fighting looked good, and he definitely felt the part.

In regards to the remaining supporting cast members, I definitely thought that there were a few of them who gave performances worth noting, albeit for roles of admittedly varying importance and size; Adam Bessa, Tinatin Dalakishvilli, Andro Japaridze, and very briefly, and slightly surprisingly, Idris Elba.

Overall, this was another solid action film with some really nicely shot sequences, which made parts of it impossible to look away from. If these films had some great writing behind them, they could be as good as those in the 'John Wick' franchise. I don't think that these are at that level yet, but this sequel was a slight step in the right direction at least.