Netflix
I legitimately enjoyed Extraction. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it’s a competent — and at times truly thrilling — old-school flick that reminded me of all the action movies I’d watch as a wide-eyed kid in the 90s. You know, the types of films that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis used to star in.
Warning: spoilers for Extraction will follow.
As I explained in my review, because essentially all of the movies that were supposed to drop this Summer have been rescheduled, Extraction may be the only somewhat legitimate Blockbuster we get for some time, so I treated it like such and made a night of it — popcorn and all. And the result was solidly enjoyable action flick that at best vaguely resembled a diet, inverse version of The Raid and at-worst lacked a particularly interesting plot. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it enough that if Netflix decided to make a sequel, I’d be in. But given the way the movie ended, would a sequel even be possible?
After Chris Hemsworth’s Tyler Rake apparently sacrifices himself on the climatic bridge battle, the film closes with Ovi (the child Rake rescues) as he jumps into a swimming pool, sitting at the bottom just like Rake did at the beginning of the movie. Then, as Ovi emerges — just as the screen cuts to black — an extremely-Chris-Hemsworth-like figure can be seen protectively watching on in the background.
Speaking to Collider, director Sam Hargrave spoke about that ambiguous ending, detailing what exactly it means and how it came to be:
“What would hopefully happen is people will be discussing that afterwards, and you get to say which one you feel is right for you,” Hargrave said.
“We had a version of the movie, and we tested it a lot, and it was not surprising that a lot of people wanted the character to live, and some people wanted him to die. People were torn; it was almost down the middle. We want to appeal to as many people as possible without compromising the integrity of the story. And so, we think a pretty good compromise is to make an ambiguous ending.
If people on one hand feel like the story is complete and is a story of redemption through sacrifice, then for them, it’ll be where the kid is imagining [Rake standing there], and then now you go, ‘Yes, I’m satisfied.’ If you feel like you love Tyler Rake, and you love Chris Hemsworth, and you want a sequel, and you’re like ‘There’s no way, you can’t kill him!’ then that’s Tyler Rake standing there looking at you. So we kind of purposefully did not pull focus to the character standing there.” [via Collider]
While I’m not usually for filmmakers succumbing to the whims and tastes of their audiences, this is an exception to that rule, as I am part of the crowd that was legitimately bummed thinking Rake had died.
After seeing what the John Wick franchise has been able to do in recent years, killing off a character before even gauging potential interest in a sequel would have been a foolish move. And given the generally positive response to Extraction from both critics and fans thus far, a second film certainly seems possible.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com