Film / Extraction

"You drown not by falling in the river, but by staying submerged in it."

— Ovi

Extraction is a 2020 Action film directed by Sam Hargrave and written by Joe Russo, based on the graphic novel Ciudad. It can be watched on Netflix.

Tyler Rakes, a mercenary, is tasked with the extraction of Ovi Mahajan, the kidnapped son of an imprisoned drug lord, from the clutches of Bangladesh's biggest drug lord, Amir Asif, who's holding Ovi for ransom.

The movie stars among others Chris Hemsworth, Rudhraksh Jaiswal, David Harbour, Golshifteh Farahani, and Randeep Hooda.

A sequel, Extraction 2, was released in June 2023.

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Tropes:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Downplayed. They have to crouch to get through the section of the sewer that they're in, they're clearly slopping through several inches of unidentifiable filth, and Ovi starts coughing immediately from the smell.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: In the middle of the film once Tyler and Ovi have been rescued by Gaspar, and are resting at Gaspar's safehouse.
• Actually Pretty Funny: When Saju walks into a hotel, he's bloody, battered, and filthy. The clerk asks how many beds he's going to need. Saju grins.
• Action Girl: Nik spends most of the movie serving as Mission Control, but shows up to help in the climax. She's also the one to kill Asif.
• Adaptational Location Change: In the novel, the setting is Ciudad el Este, Paraguay. The film changes it to Dhaka, Bangladesh.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Tyler and Eva Roche were lovers in the novel. In the film, Tyler and Ovi are just friends and have no romantic affection at all.
• Adaptation Title Change: The film is based on a graphic novel titled Ciudad.
• After Action Patch Up: Both Tyler and Saju have to patch themselves up after their first fight.
• Ambiguous Ending: It is left it open whether Tyler is actually dead and whether the man standing in the background in the last shot is really Tyler or just Ovi's imagination. The the sequel confirmed that Tyler survived.
• Anti-Villain: Saju wants to rescue Ovi so his family won't get killed by Ovi's father, but neither he nor the father can pay the ransom money. Instead, he tricks Tyler's team into doing the heavy lifting and kills most of them so he can extract Ovi at the intended drop-off point himself.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted hard. The SWAT unit on Asif's payroll wears body armor that can stop even the point-blank pistol shots from Tyler's Glock. He needs to hit them either in the limbs or face, or find some other way to neutralize them (in one case by throwing them off a railing). The lighter flak/kevlar vests of the regular officers and soldiers is realistically less effective against the heavier calibre of Tyler's assault rifle.
• Awesome Aussie: Tyler appears to be Australian, like his actor, and is very awesome.
• Blood from the Mouth: Tyler, after getting shot in the side (indicating a lung hit) and more after getting shot in the neck.
• Book Ends:
  • Tyler is introduced jumping from a cliff into deep waters. The movie ends with Tyler falling from the bridge into deep waters after getting shot.
  • Another bookend related to the above. With Tyler's first scene being his dive from a cliff into deep waters to hold his breath for a while, the last scene is Ovi doing the same thing from a diving board, but being less successful in staying submerged.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • Saju dies this way during the bridge battle. Nik repays this with one of her own to the elderly Colonel responsible.
  • This is also how G is killed.
  • This is how Amir dies after the Time Skip.
• Bound and Gagged: Ovi is subjected to this as he is held for ransom.
• Camera Abuse: A cop who was pursuing Ovi gets headshot by Tyler during the apartment shootout, splattering blood on the camera.
• Child Soldiers: Farhad's gang of street children pressed into Asif's service. Farhad is a teenager (his actor was 17 at time of filming) and seemingly the oldest of the bunch, in some cases by a significant margin.
• Cold Sniper: G, and later the Colonel.
• Combat Pragmatist: Both Tyler and Saju fight dirty, press every advantage and use every Improvised Weapon that comes to hand.
• Contract on the Hitman: Well, on the mercenary team, as Saju doesn't have the money to pay them, so he gets them to do the hard part and then starts wasting them himself.
• Covered in Scars: Tyler's back is covered in scars, including at least two bullet wounds and signs of spinal surgery.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Tyler and Saju against just about anybody except each other, but Tyler versus the street kids is particularly one-sided, and he notably doesn't even bother using lethal force despite them very much trying to use it on him.
• Curse Cut Short: Twice, Tyler is interrupted saying "Oh sh–" as someone shoots at him.
• Creator Cameo: Director Sam Hargrave cameos as "G", who covers Tyler at the end of the first act.
• Dark Action Girl: Nik Khan, one of Tyler's fellow mercenaries.
• Death Seeker: Tyler, according to Nik.
  Nik: You're hoping if you spin the chamber enough times, you're gonna catch a bullet.
• Dented Iron: Tyler is seen taking pills, presumably painkillers, multiple times. Gaspar asks him if it's for his knee.
  Tyler: Yeah, knee, back, shoulder...
• Diabolus ex Machina: Farhad appearing near the end and shooting Tyler in the neck.
• Dirty Cop: The entire police force of Dhaka is under Asif's payroll. It's implied that he can also influence politicians through them since he puts the entire city on lockdown.
• Dirty Coward: Tyler reveals to Ovi that believes himself to be one, having volunteered for another tour of duty in Afghanistan so he wouldn't have to be around when his son passed.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Farhad is so insulted that Tyler kicks his ass and doesn't even consider him enough of a threat to use lethal force that he cuts off one of his own fingers to encourage Asif to let him be the one to kill Tyler.
• Double Tap: Frequently. Probably most notable when Nik kills Asif at the end. She shoots him in the head, then puts two more rounds into him while he's lying on the ground.
• Do You Trust Me?: Name-dropped by Tyler. Considering Ovi doesn't even know his name at that point, the answer is a blunt "No."
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Rake is a former member of Australia's Special Air Service Regiment. Saju is a former Para(Special Forces), which is how he's one of the only people capable of matching Rake punch for punch.
• Enemy Mine: Saju and Tyler team up to get Ovi to the extraction point, because Saju's family is at stake and at that point all Tyler cares about is getting out Ovi.
• Evil Versus Evil: Nik summarizes the conflict as "Biggest drug lord in India versus biggest drug lord in Bangladesh."
• Eye Scream: Tyle slams a mook face-first onto the head of a broken rake to kill him.
• Face–Heel Turn: Gaspar owes Tyler a favor from their past as mercenaries, but it turns out that he's even closer friends with Asif and wants to turn Ovi in to him.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Tyler royally kicks Farhad's ass but avoids killing him. Farhad repays his mercy in the end by shooting him in the neck.
• Fingore: Asif tries to make Farhad cut off two of his own fingers on their first meeting. Farhad later apparently cuts one off after his failure at the market and promises another to Asif if he lets Farhad be the one to kill Tyler.
• Gender Flip: Ovi Mahajan was a girl named Eva Roche in the graphic novel.
• Genre Deconstruction: In classic action movies Tyler would be considered an One-Man Army by mowing down Asif's men to rescue Ovi. In this film, he gets battered and banged up to the point that he had to spend most of the film recovering from his injuries. Then, in the climax of the film, he was overwhelmed by Asif's forces and was shot to death. Presumably. He didn't even get the chance to kill the film's main villain.
• Giving Them the Strip: A cop grabs Ovi and tries to drag him away, but Ovi slips out of the bulletproof vest Tyler strapped onto him, getting away.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Tyler's body is Covered in Scars but there is nothing disfiguring his handsome face. Farhad's Glasgow Grin perfectly suits his ruthless and sadistic personality.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Tyler, in the midst of the climactic fight, snaps one mook's neck...by slapping him in the face with another mook.
• Gun Fu: Tyler uses liberal amounts of it while fighting several corrupt cops in an apartment building.
• Happy Flashback: Tyler keeps having flashbacks of playing with his late son on a beach.
• Hate Sink: Amir was made to be hated.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Not one of the good guys wears a helmet. Justified, because they're trying to keep a low profile.
• Hollywood Silencer: Averted for the most part. Tyler's assault rifle and the SMGs that Saju use all carry suppressors and produce muted reports as a result, but people nearby still hear the shots and recognize them as gunshots. Played straight with the first shot from G's sniper rifle, which goes unnoticed, although the later ones are noticed after Tyler opens fire with an unsuppressed assault rifle. Likewise, the silenced pistol shots from Nik at the end of the film go apparently unheard by Asif's guards.
• Hope Spot: Tyler's critically injured, but it looks like all the baddies on the bridge are dead and he turns to make his way to the others and to possible medical attention...and then Farhad shows up.
• Hostage MacGuffin: Ovi.
• How We Got Here: The movie starts with Tyler taking part in a shootout on a bridge, which is the climax of the movie.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: A truly bizarre variant without every actually hitting the "Marvin", wherein a friendly target is recklessly endangered when hitting them should be the absolute last thing the shooter wants to do. Saju spends a lot of an early chase scene shooting at Tyler...when Ovi happens to be right next to him, including in the same car that Saju is shooting at. Considering that Saju's one and only goal is extracting Ovi alive and unharmed, repeatedly shooting in his general direction during a chaotic firefight where he's actually more likely to hit the boy than his intended target seems like a gross oversight.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Asif discusses this with Farhad, whom he advises not to try being a badass because there will always be a bigger badass. Considering Farhad sneaks into the final battle, shoots Tyler in the back, and then gets the hell out of there, he appears to have taken the advice to heart.
• Improbable Weapon User: Tyler's last name is "Rakes", so of course he kills a man with a rake during a fight scene.
• Insert Grenade Here: Tyler disables an armored car by shoving a couple of grenades through the gunports.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Farhad completely gets away with shooting Tyler in the neck; and he's also the only named villain from the movie who survives.
  • Shadek also got off scot-free.
• Knife Fight: Tyler and Saju engage in one after falling off a building. It ends when Tyler gets hit with a car.
• Large Ham: Farhad. Three times he tries to engage Tyler, announcing "I will finish you off!" or "I'll murder you," only to be taken down without much effort on Tyler's part. Unfortunately, he figures out that announcing his presence is a bad idea before his last encounter with Tyler.
• Last Stand: Severely wounded, Tyler tells Ovi to run for the helicopter and takes care of the remaining enemies until he is seemingly fatally shot in the neck.
• Made of Iron: Tyler and Saju are able to take an incredible amount of punishment ranging from falling off a roof to getting hit by a truck. Even getting shot in the side doesn't stop Tyler from killing lots of soldiers. Saju takes multiple hits from a UMP at close range that clearly penetrate (he leaves a large blood smear behind) and still manages to get up.
• More Dakka: A helicopter with several men riding on the side (toying with the trope, not firing on fully automatic but making up for it in volume of shooters) and a door gunner with a machine gun manage to pin Saju down effectively until Nik hits the chopper with an RPG.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Asif has the son of a rival drug lord kidnapped in order to humiliate him. Rather than keep the boy in a secure location surrounded by armed guards (it eventually becomes clear he has the entire Dhaka police department on his payroll) Asif decides to keep him tied up inside a slummy apartment building guarded only by a handful of untrained and incompetent gangsters, including children. This only makes it much easier for a trained professional like Tyler to kill the guards and rescue Ovi under the pretense of paying the ransom.
• One-Man Army: Tyler and Saju each mow through waves of Bangladeshi police and soldiers.
• The Oner: About halfway through the movie there is an 11-minute take where Tyler and Ovi are trying to escape from enemy forces. This includes driving away in a car, then leaving a car and fleeing in a building where they are pursued by soldiers and finally a showdown with Saju.
• One-Word Title: Extraction
• On Three: But Tyler only counts to one before throwing Ovi out of the truck and jumping himself.
• Outliving One's Offspring: In a quiet moment, Tyler reveals to Ovi that he had a son who died of lymphoma at age six.
• Pants-Positive Safety: Justified, as Saju just ditched his tactical gear, so the only place he has left to stick his pistol is in his waistband.
• Pet the Dog: Even though he was willing to cut off Fahrad's finger on a whim in order to make a point at the beginning of the movie; Amir Asif seems to take a liking to the boy and more or less takes him under his wing; and his only moments in the film where he shows something that appears like personal affability is when he reminds him that he shouldn't take someone like Tyler lightly.
• Poor Communication Kills: In the climax, even after Rashid takes out Saju, the chopper pilot, and one of Nik's mercenaries, nobody bothers to warn Tyler that there's a sniper in the area. He doesn't take cover like he should (only taking cover from the police and soldiers ahead of and behind him) and gets shot as a result.
• Private Military Contractors: Rake and his fellow mercenaries appear to be the heroic variation, although it's hinted that they've done less than savory jobs in the past.
• Race Lift: The Bengali characters in the film were originally Paraguayan Hispanics.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The elderly Colonel easily kills several Red Shirts as well as Saju using just one sniper rifle, while previously the protagonists killed hundreds of his men. This raises a question - why didn't any other members of the Dhaka's police force (possibly younger and of lower rank) do the sniping, when it proved to be so effective?
• Revenge: In one of the last scenes, Nik Khan shoots Asif to avenge Tyler.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Both Tyler's team and Saju shoot up the Bangladesh underworld in order to rescue Ovi from Asif's clutches.
• Self-Deprecation: One of the biggest criticisms of the source material was the incessant swearing. Early in the film adaptation; which shares a writer; Tyler tells a colleague to stop swearing so much because it makes him sound stupid.
• Shout-Out:
  • Tyler refers to the pack of kids that attacks them as "The Goonies from Hell."
  • Saju pinning a mook down with the barrel of his weapon as he reloads the weapon is almost certainly one from John Wick: Chapter 2.
    • In the same vein, when Farhad fights Tyler, he thrusts a knife at him and punches the hilt several times in an attempt to drive it further forward, replicating a similar technique in John Wick. In this case, however, Tyler is so much bigger and stronger than Farhad that it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.
• Sniper Duel: Briefly between Nik and the Colonel in the climax. Nik wins.
• Sniping the Cockpit: Colonel Rashid manages this on the extraction chopper, forcing the copilot (one of Nik's mercenaries) to take the controls and bug out. Justified, since the chopper was attempting a landing.
• South Asian Terrorists: Dhaka, Bangladesh is pretty much portrayed as being full of this. Majority of the Bangladeshis (except token good girl Nik Khan) are either Gangsters, child soldiers or corrupt cops, RAB and military members working for Crime Lord Asif Amir.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Ovi's father is a drug lord who is in prison. When his son is kidnapped and held for ransom, he might be able to threaten his son's caretaker's family, but he can't pay the ransom himself because his assets are frozen.
  • The men who were holding Ovi weren't exactly concerned for his welfare or comfort. As a result, he has to change his pants after Tyler springs him.
  • Tyler's Gun Fu in the apartment building is brutally effective, but it also puts him at point-blank range to his targets. One of them manages to grab his gun and stop it from cycling properly as he fires, forcing him to take a moment and manually rack the slide on his vest to chamber a new round.
  • Getting hit with a car might be something you can walk away from, but it's not something you can just walk off, no matter how tough you are. Both Tyler and Saju are severely banged up by their respective car accidents.
  • Just because Ovi isn't actively on the line with Tyler discussing leaving him behind with Nik doesn't mean he can't hear what's being said.
  • Tyler, while notably injured, is attacked by a group of slum kids. Him being former special forces, and having at least a hundred pounds on each of them besides, the film doesn't even pretend the kids are a threat to him, and the fight is mostly him tossing them about like ragdolls.
  • Tyler takes a round in the side during the climactic battle. He keeps fighting, but doesn't stop to treat it or stop the bleeding, so his side is soaked in blood by the time he gets to the bridge and the blood loss is clearly affecting him.
• Tae Kwon Door: Tyler knocks out Farhad by hitting him with a car door.
• Take It to the Bridge: The climax of the movie takes place on a bridge.
• Unorthodox Reload: During the apartment shootout, a mook manages to grab Tyler's Glock by the slide, preventing it from ejecting the spent cartridge. As his other hand is busy with Gun Fu, Tyler strikes the back sight against his vest to rack the slide manually.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Many of the citizens seem less than perturbed by a giant armed Australian man kicking their doors in or knife-fighting another man in the middle of the street. One is so apathetic about the sight that they hit Tyler with a car right when he has Saju on the ropes.
• Warm Place, Warm Lighting: The film, set in Bangladesh, introduces the country with a yellow-tinted panning shot over Dhaka, and the sickly filter remains in many of the Dhaka scenes. In contrast, the scenes that introduce the white protagonist, set in Australia, are neutrally toned.
• With My Hands Tied: Tyler takes down a mook with his hands zip-tied and a bag over his head.
• Would Hurt a Child: Asif kidnaps Ovi for ransom and has one of his friends killed in the process. He is also not averse to having much younger children killed to to demonstrate his power.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Tyler avoids killing any of the children that attack him since he knows that they are pressured and since he himself had a son who died young. Doesn't mean he won't kick their asses, though. He also immediately shuts down Gaspar's idea to kill Ovi. This ends up biting him in the ass when Farhad turns up again and seemingly kills him in the finale.
• You Have Out Lived Your Usefulness: Once Tyler is approaching the intended extraction point, Saju starts knocking off members of his team, intending to extract Ovi himself.

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