THE first ‘Extraction’ in 2020 was a big hit on Netflix, with 99 million households watching it worldwide. The directorial debut of Sam Hargrave, it introduced Chris Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, an Australian soldier turned black ops mercenary who rescues the kidnapped son of an Indian drug lord in Bangladesh.

It ended with Tyler severely wounded, falling off a bridge and plunging into a river. A final shot shows that he could have survived, hinting there would be a sequel. And now, “Extraction 2” is here.

It starts with the unconscious Tyler being rescued from the river, then rushed to a hospital where he lays in coma for sometime.

His fellow mercenary, Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani), looks after him until he regains consciousness and undergoes rehab so he could walk again. When he is discharged from the hospital, he chooses to live by himself in a distant cabin in a snowy mountain location where he hopes to retire and live peacefully.

A mysterious man (Idris Elba) suddenly pops up to offer him a new job, which he quickly rejects. But when Idris tells him that he is being asked by his ex-wife, Mia (Olga Kurylenko), to help her sister Ketevan (Tinatin D), who is in prison with her son and daughter to keep her criminal husband company.

The husband is Davit Radiani (Tornike Bziava), a notorious gangster in Georgia who has pulled strings to have his wife and kids locked up with him in the same prison. Of course, the wife is against the idea of their children growing up inside the prison with other criminals, so she asks the help of her sister to take them out. But the elder boy, Sandro (Andro Japaridze), does not want to leave his father in jail.

Tyler accepts the assignment and seeks the help of his friend Nik who joins him along with her brother Yaz (Adam Bessa). Both Nik and Yaz were in the first movie. This is where the action scenes start. First with Tyler and company breaking into the prison and, later, with them breaking out with Ketevan and the two children.

They try to do it quietly, but David wakes up and alerts his cohorts to stop them from going out. This is a big action set piece, with Tyler getting to kill Davit who tries to prevent them from escaping.

The entire action sequence is made with amazing craftsmanship, dizzying camera techniques and effects, to orient the viewer with the film’s exhilarating style of staging nonstop action scenes.

Tyler succeeds in accomplishing his mission and takes Ketevan and kids to a tall skyscraper in Vienna for refuge. But Davit’s brother, Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani), who’s running their criminal organization called Nagazi while Davit is in jail, is now bent on avenging Davit’s death. He attacks Tyler’s high rise safehouse with all his heavily armed men, trapping them inside the building.

The ensuing action sequences and the stunt work are painstakingly choreographed and it’s easy to appreciate the detailed set pieces they’ve done to pull it all off. The film’s final action sequence is set inside a church where Zurab has taken Sandro hostage wearing a vest full of bombs.

In “Extraction 2”, we get to learn more about Tyler’s sad personal history which was not really explored in the first film. We get to meet his ex-wife and know about his guilt feelings about leaving her and their child who had a terminal disease.

It adds a touching human layer to Tyler as a person and acts as a welcome dramatic break from all the non-stop gunfights and bone crunching bloodbaths. The first movie featured a 12-minute single shot non-stop action scene. The sequel makes it longer, with a 21-minute action scene that is truly astounding in conception and execution.

This is Hemsworth’s second franchise series after Thor, the God of Thunder in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which he does with a touch of comedy. This time, he gives a tougher and more serious portrayal as Tyler, with his charismatic screen presence making his character easier to root for.

The movie ends with Idris Elba contacting Tyler again for a new mission, setting up for another sequel, so we can be sure that “Extraction 3” will be coming a couple of years from now.