Movie Review: Extraction 2 (2023)

Genre: Action

Director: Sam Hargrave

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Golshifteh Farahani

Running Time: 123 minutes

Synopsis: After recuperating from his previous mission, independent mercenary and rescue specialist Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is hired by his ex-wife Mia via a mysterious intermediary (Idris Elba). Mia wants Tyler to rescue her sister Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and nephew Sandro from the clutches of Sandro's incarcerated father Davit in the country of Georgia. Tyler teams up with his associate Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and her brother Yaz (Adam Bessa) to infiltrate the prison and rescue the family, but Sandro's uncle Zurab leads the ruthless Nagazi syndicate and mobilizes his considerable forces to thwart the mission.

What Works Well: The high-quality gritty action, realistic locations, and Chris Hemsworth's cool presence all return for another effective round of bone-crunching, terrain-destroying mayhem. Director Sam Hargrave raises the bar on his single-shot wizardry with a jaw-dropping, physics-defying 21 minute sequence that starts at a prison, progresses to a car chase through the forest, and ends on a getaway train, with several helicopters thrown in for good measure. Tidbits of character background and personal losses are thrown in to periodically re-focus attention on the people.

What Does Not Work As Well: Fully embracing a misguided more-is-better attitude, the action now routinely surrenders to excessive and over-the-top tendencies, with characters absorbing bullets and other lethal sharp objects like sponges and immediately bouncing back up for more. Most of the plot details make no sense, including a small army of Georgian thugs marching into central Vienna complete with airpower and rocket propelled grenades, and the bad guys seemingly happy to target the children they are supposedly desperate to reclaim.

Conclusion: Mindless but otherwise highly-polished and unstoppable entertainment.



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Movie Review: Spiderhead (2022)

A drama combining pharmaceutical drug experimentation with the search for redemption, Spiderhead abandons interesting themes in favour of mindless thrills.

Located within an idyllic but isolated tropical setting, the low-security Spiderhead penitentiary houses inmates who have agreed to be subjects for experimental drug tests. The suave and confident Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) and his assistant chemist Mark (Mark Paguio) operate the facility, creating and testing drugs that manipulate emotions. Jeff (Miles Teller) is one of the test subjects, still processing the trauma of having caused death by driving while impaired. He starts a friendship with fellow inmate Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett).

Steve has a soft spot for Jeff, and uses him to test a drug that enhances sexual attractiveness. But Jeff balks when forced to participate in tests of a drug that causes rage and pain. Meanwhile Steve carries his own emotional scars from a troubled upbringing, and self-administers experimental drugs to dull the pain. When a test goes wrong and a subject is harmed, the relationship between Steve and Jeff ruptures, leading to a final confrontation.

Spiderhead starts slowly, builds sufficient curiosity to warrant some attention, but then fizzles badly into a quite awful final act. Adapting a book by George Saunders, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick take their time to create a sense of place and purpose. Good work from Hemsworth, Teller, and Smollett helps to create decent momentum by the halfway mark, the science faction exploring what human cravings the pharmaceutical industry may next choose to exploit.

But with many intriguing narrative avenues available to pursue, director Joseph Kosinki steers towards an inane climax involving bingo cards, sloppy safety and security measures, and critical devices placed in the hands of inmates. Revelations tumble out in an irrelevant torrent, and emotions oscillate with no coherence as chaos is allowed to reign. The drama disintegrates from potentially cerebral to plain stupid, and in a late act of desperation, madcap humour is inserted into the previously dour mood.

The set design is slick and sleek, but Spiderhead opts for the rancid juice.



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Movie Review: Extraction (2020)

A superlative action movie, Extraction surpasses genre expectations and delivers a non-stop thrill ride infused with on-location artistry.

In India, Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) is the young son of jailed drug lord Mahajan (Pankaj Tripathi). Ovi is kidnapped by goons working for rival mobster Amir (Priyanshu Painyuli) and held for ransom in Dhaka, Bangladesh. From behind bars Mahajan pressures his ally Saju (Randeep Hooda) to mount a rescue.

Saju is short of money but hires the mercenary team led by Australian special forces veteran Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) and his business partner Nik (Golshifteh Farahani). Tyler overpowers Amir's men and grabs Ovi, but when hidden agendas are revealed, what started as a straightforward extraction quickly runs into major problems.

The plot is essentially in the one-word title, but Extraction constructs a magnificent experience upon the simple premise. Director Sam Hargrave, the stunt coordinator for many Marvel films, creates an exhilarating, hard-hitting and violent mercenary adventure, drawing strength from chaotic street locations (filmed in India and Thailand) and camerawork wizardry. 

The entire running length of 117 minutes is captivating, the energy level rarely flagging. But a 12 minute single-shot sequence bookended by two explosions is simply superb. Meticulously executed, the breathtaking achievement features a wild car chase, door-to-door search, bone jarring close quarters combat, several astounding stunt jumps, and a truck pursuit. Hargrave hides the seams with mezmerizing camera work celebrating fluidity, the action choreographed with balletic elegance devoted to visual continuity.

On either side of this highlight is a taut thriller, the Joe Russo script tapping a prosperous rhythm by alternating scenes of urban combat with background depth. In the middle of both the flying bullets and the self-reflection pauses is star Chris Hemsworth. He has rarely been better, here injecting a stock character with a large dose of humanity and passion to create a throbbing heart. Tyler's backstory is rudimentary, but he does develop a meaningful bond with Ovi.

Several other characters are also rounded beyond genre expectations. Saju has a family to protect, and Amir gets several scenes to highlight his ruthlessness and ability to inspire the next generation, the introduction of a protege flagging susceptibility caused by impoverishment. David Harbour gets a small role as another mercenary called into the arena.

With spirit and ingenuity, Extraction polishes familiar elements into elegant brilliance.



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Movie Review: 12 Strong (2018)

An action war movie based on real events, 12 Strong benefits from stirring action scenes and a strong connection to remarkable facts. But the film is overlong and often wades into traditional jingoism.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Green Beret Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth) reverses his decision to seek a desk job and accepts an assignment to lead his unit of 12 men into Afghanistan. Nelson has no combat experience but is respected by his men, including Chief Warrant Officer Hal Spencer (Michael Shannon) and Sergeant Sam Diller (Michael Peña).

The unit is dropped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan with orders to connect with the forces of anti-Taliban Northern Alliance leader General Dostum (Navid Negahban) and storm the strategically vital city of Mazar-i Sharif. Nelson finds it difficult to earn Dostum's respect, and his men have to learn horsemen skills to navigate the mountainous terrain. And although Nelson can call upon airstrikes, the Taliban are dug-in with heavy armaments and are much more familiar with the local terrain.

The first American combat mission after the 9/11 attacks was a secret incursion eventually chronicled in the 2009 book Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton. The script by Ted Tally and Peter Craig is brought to the screen by first-time director Nicolai Fuglsig, and the film combines plenty of action scenes with some character backfill and culture clash sequences. Fuglsig is more comfortable with combat, and when the bullets start flying 12 Strong settles into a whizzy groove, over the top for sure but edited into welcome coherence.

The attempts to round some of the key members of Nelson's crew into relatable people are laudable but ultimately futile. This is a war film where tough guys just grimace and carry on, and none of the jokeyness, serious conversations and difficult-talks-with-the-wives add much nuance.

The thrust to humanize men of war includes a concerted effort on the relationship between Nelson and Dostum, and here Fuglsig finds more success if well within genre conventions. East meets west, a veteran fighter assesses an untested possible ally, and fear of the unknown cuts both ways. Both men will have to come through for each other, and while the tension between them adds to the drama, the outcome is never in doubt.

The trio of Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon and Michael Peña provide sufficient star presence to propel the action without overpowering the narrative. One Taliban commander is afforded the dubious honour of representing the enemy, dressed all in black all the time for emphasis, and here the script falls flat by providing no context whatsoever to the other side of the conflict.

But the greatest threat to the film's success emerges in the form of creeping length, almost every scene unnecessarily prolonged. Nelson promised to achieve his objectives in a remarkable three weeks; at 130 minutes, the film did not need to feel as long.

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Movie Review: Blackhat (2015)

A laborious techno thriller, Blackhat clicks all the wrong commands and hacks its way to a failure of entertainment.

An unknown hacker uploads malware, blowing up a Chinese nuclear reactor and manipulating the Chicago mercantile exchange to yield instant profit. The Chinese government appoints Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) to collaborate with the FBI's Agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) to track down and stop the hacker. Chen brings along his tech-savvy sister Chen Lien (Tang Wei), and once in the US insists that master hacker Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) be released from prison to help out.

The investigation leads to Hong Kong and ruthless Lebanese middle man Elias Kassar (Ritchie Coster), who is doing the dirty work for the techno crime lord. Hathaway and Lien fall in love as the pursuit picks up pace, with Kassar proving a deadly and resilient foe. To track the identity of the mastermind Hathaway infiltrates a National Security Agency system, instantly becoming a fugitive again but leading him to a desolate site in Malaysia and a climax in Indonesia.

Despite a potentially compelling and topical hacking premise, director Michael Mann manages to almost get everything wrong in Blackhat. At 133 minutes, this is an over-long movie devoid of interesting characters and in love with its own look, Mann returning to his worst Miami Vice tendencies of focusing on wavy hair, cool shades and colour compositions while the core of the film disintegrates all around the pretty pictures.

A lame and derivative script does not help. The central crime is familiar since Goldfinger, and is here punctuated by plot holes and asked to lean heavily on the criminal-helping-out cliche done to death in movies like The Rock and The Jackal. Once again, a subject matter expert is released from prison to help stop a crime, and once again, the convict is somehow much more proficient in all aspects of crime fighting than all the assembled law enforcement professionals.

The film suffers a stunning blow when the plot details are revealed, a really? moment that pauses to reflect on the irreversible damage to the film's credibility whereby an attack on a nuclear facility is just a test run for...flooding remote river beds to corner the tin market? Compounding matters is the cardinal sin of never introducing the antagonist as a character, the mastermind behind the dumbfounding plan to attack the trading price of a cheap metal never even given the courtesy of a decent introduction. He's just a guy with a bad haircut and worse wardrobe.

A couple of signature Mann action scenes featuring plenty of gunfire help alleviate the tedium, and Blackhat does have an attractive multicultural cast in its favour, and goes out of its way to promote US-Sino cooperation. But while Tang Wei emerges as a possibly interesting character, Chris Hemsworth sucks the charisma out of the film with a dour one-note performance, and all too often grabs Tang's arm and pulls her along in a nauseatingly old-fashioned display of faux male authority. Viola Davis is utterly wasted in an underwritten role.

A disappointing combination of boring and asinine, Blackhat deserves a dose of its own malware.

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Movie Review: The Cabin In The Woods (2012)

A horror film laced with comedy and satire, The Cabin In The Woods enjoys building up and breaking down genre conventions.

A group of five college friends head off for a fun weekend at an isolated cabin deep in the woods. Curt (Chris Hemsworth) and Jules (Anna Hutchison) are a lustful couple, Dana (Kristen Connolly) is their unattached virginal but-not-a-virgin-friend, Holden (Jesse Williams) is the hunky newcomer who could be a good love match for Dana, and Marty (Fran Kranz) is the surprisingly perceptive stoner.

In parallel, Gary (Richard Jenkins) and Steve (Bradley Whitford) are two weary managers in charge of a large high-tech facility under the command of an unseen Director. Gary and Steve see and manipulate everything going on at the cabin.

After arriving, settling down and enjoying a swim, the five friends stumble into the cabin cellar. Dana finds an ancient diary and reads macabre text with Latin phrases, unleashing a family of killer zombie monsters from nearby graves. The college friends are soon under vicious attack, with Gary, Steve and their army of technicians intervening in real time to ensure the deadly carnage unfolds according to plan.

A frantic and bloody horror film riding a wave of eccentric originality, The Cabin In The Woods carves out a unique path while still saluting genre fundamentals. The adventure at the spooky cabin carries all the familiar elements of twentysomethings introduced to horrible deaths, but early on director Drew Goddard interweaves the Gary and Steve oversight command centre to make clear this is not a traditional horror narrative.

The film's middle segment is a relatively standard kill-or-be-killed zombie war zone, with the added mischievous gloss of explaining why victims-to-be always behave the way they do. Gradually the two settings come together in a story of sacrifice and international efforts to ward off humanity's end at the expense of cultural offerings.

The final act explodes into a climax that turns sharply towards blood soaked irreverent humour. Monster lovers will rejoice at where Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon gleefully steer their imaginations, and The Cabin In The Woods relocates from rustic isolation to a new and more modern battleground.

Within the twisted take on why so many teenagers die in all those horror movies, the film explores themes of free will, sin, penance, friendship, loyalty and layers of discourse on individual rights versus collective good. Dana and Marty are forced to confront uncomfortable choices, in this case heroics in pursuit of personal survival not necessarily the only satisfactory resolution to the lurking evil.

By pushing deep into uncharted terrain, The Cabin In The Woods ticks all the expected boxes and creates a few new ones.

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Movie Review: Rush (2013)

An intense rivalry speeding in the lush valley between glory and death, Rush recreates the turbulent 1976 Formula 1 motor racing season, and the epic battle for the title between defending champion Niki Lauda and challenger James Hunt.

It's the early 1970s, and Englishman James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is making a name for himself in the lower leagues of open wheel racing. Young, brash and living the life of alcohol, sex, drugs and more sex, Hunt's natural talent gets him a ride with a private team funded by playful millionaire Alexander Hesketh (Christian McKay). Meanwhile, Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) is also climbing the racing ranks, having turned his back on the business opportunities provided by his well-heeled family. The antithesis of Hunt, Lauda is cold, calculating and single-mindedly focused on winning. He buys his way into Formula 1 with the struggling BRM team, while Hesketh also steps up to the top echelon.

Lauda quickly moves to the prestigious Ferrari team, meets future wife Marlene (Alexandra Maria Lara), and in 1975 seals his first world title, with Hunt still struggling in inferior equipment. Hunt marries glamorous model Suzi Miller (Olivia Wilde), but their marriage is soon on the rocks, and things look really bleak when Hesketh's financial losses force a withdrawal from the sport. But the front-running McLaren team unexpectedly lose their top driver and turn to Hunt as a replacement. The scene is set for the 1976 season, with Lauda expecting to easily defend his throne, and Hunt equally determined to prove that he belongs at the top of the sport. The season would include controversy, disqualification, a near fatal crash, and a climax in the torrential rain at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan.

The 1976 Formula 1 season is the stuff of legend, the type of sports drama that, as fiction, would be considered outlandish. Director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan deserve credit for faithfully recreating in Rush a moment in time when all the ingredients came together to create an unforgettable championship battle. In a sport that, at the time, married gung-ho magnetism to a ridiculously high risk of fatal crashes, one or two deaths per year was still considered normal. The racers attracted to the sport where either daredevils like Hunt or calculating perfectionists from the Lauda breed, and all of them needed to possess a mix of self-confidence and a sense of invincibility to shake hands with mortality at every corner.

Rush also wades into the sport's arcane but fascinating technical battles. By the mid-1970s commercial interests had started to become more important, the money flowed, and behind the scenes politics started to exert a huge influence. Hence top teams like Ferrari and McLaren started arguing about every inch, literally, and legal interpretations of the regulations became a sport within the sport. Hunt and Lauda's on-track rivalry was augmented by accusations of cheating and rule bending that further heightened the tension, resulting in disqualifications, appeals and reinstatements. Morgan actually simplifies some of the major controversies to keep the spotlight on the drivers.

And Rush is, ultimately, about the two drivers. The film steers far from heroism and presents both Hunt as Lauda as supremely talented racers with very human characteristics. Both are fallible, both can be rude and dismissive, and both are self-centred. And yet they are polar opposites, driven to the top of the sport by completely different motivations. Their rivalry, at least in 1976, propelled them both towards achievements greater than either would have accomplished without the other. Ironically, Rush places more emphasis than necessary on the friction points between the two men, who, in reality, where closer friends than inferred by the film.

Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl are both excellent, quickly settling into the personalities of the drivers. Hemsworth gets the showier role and polishes Hunt's flash-in-the-pan, fun-loving persona to a shine. Brühl generates the necessary intensity as the methodical, in-for-the-long-term Lauda, in a performance that is deeper, and ultimately, more poignant, as Lauda's rationality and force of will is severely tested more than once during the course of the season.

The on-track sequences are superb. Howard and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle capture the thrilling speed generated by the sleek Formula 1 machinery, and never go over the top in exaggerating the racing action. The recreations of the fiery crash at the Nurburgring track and the final, monsoon-drenched race in Japan are handled particularly brilliantly.

In a race to the chequered flag, Rush crosses the finish line first, triumphant in chronicling a celebrated rivalry between equal yet opposite competitors.

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