Extraction II, now it's updated!
Extraction was a fun anomaly, a pure action movie with good guys fighting bad guys, and bad guys turning out good and vice versa.
This time, our suicidal hero Tyler gets a second chance by his boss, Nik Khan. A chance to retreat into the wilderness to heal and to find himsell, maybe even forgive himself for his past.
A surprise visit upends his droll days of self-pity and budding realization that he may have been reduced to just an average man after all, when a man named Alcott comes with news that his former Wifes sister and her kids lives are in peril, in a dank, Georgian prison.
So he sets his employers machinery in motion to save them, backed up by a team consisting of some anonymous, disposible mercenaries, his boss, and her brother.
After they locate the little family unit, minus the dad, the prison turns into a war zone. Que a lot of action, and a believable interaction between our killing machine and his siter-in-law. She can't handle a 130 kg beefed up criminal of course, but she dishes out some effective blows with shovels and whatever she finds, and she is badass!
Then, of course, Hollywood politics and American gender fantasy enters the decision making. Men are evil, corrupt or plain stupid (like the son and his uncles), or sad doormats and killing machines. Women are good, smart and powerful, or eternal victims of men's evil. So yet again we are asked to believe a 50 kg woman can toss men twice her size around like it's nothing, that she can run as fast, kill as effectively and be as remorseless as her mercenary employees. Of course she was melanin richer than most, because she was the hero. The pale woman must be the victim in need of saving, as per post-2015 Hollywood convention.
Granted, at this point all realism is gone. The bad guys, petty drug smugglers, has the capacity of a medium sized country, they control the politics, the police, prison system and the army, so they throw everyting against or heroes. Helicopter, motorcycles (How is that effective? Apparently it's pretty much the most effective assault vehicles known to man..) and they have international reach.
And I could no longer invest in this movie. Of course escapism and suspension of belief is a factor in all action movies, but when politics, feminism, forced representation and social indoctrination trumps a decent script with entertaining visuals, most audiences lose interest pretty soon.
We don't pay for a lecture in marginalized, fringe theory, we pay to be entertained. IF you have an original and insightful lesson, the better, but it is not at all a requisite. And let's face it, Hollywood is not the platform for insightful and nuanced politics. The sooner the movie industry remembers that simple fact, the sooner they can make some good money again, and reclaim their relevancy.
This time, our suicidal hero Tyler gets a second chance by his boss, Nik Khan. A chance to retreat into the wilderness to heal and to find himsell, maybe even forgive himself for his past.
A surprise visit upends his droll days of self-pity and budding realization that he may have been reduced to just an average man after all, when a man named Alcott comes with news that his former Wifes sister and her kids lives are in peril, in a dank, Georgian prison.
So he sets his employers machinery in motion to save them, backed up by a team consisting of some anonymous, disposible mercenaries, his boss, and her brother.
After they locate the little family unit, minus the dad, the prison turns into a war zone. Que a lot of action, and a believable interaction between our killing machine and his siter-in-law. She can't handle a 130 kg beefed up criminal of course, but she dishes out some effective blows with shovels and whatever she finds, and she is badass!
Then, of course, Hollywood politics and American gender fantasy enters the decision making. Men are evil, corrupt or plain stupid (like the son and his uncles), or sad doormats and killing machines. Women are good, smart and powerful, or eternal victims of men's evil. So yet again we are asked to believe a 50 kg woman can toss men twice her size around like it's nothing, that she can run as fast, kill as effectively and be as remorseless as her mercenary employees. Of course she was melanin richer than most, because she was the hero. The pale woman must be the victim in need of saving, as per post-2015 Hollywood convention.
Granted, at this point all realism is gone. The bad guys, petty drug smugglers, has the capacity of a medium sized country, they control the politics, the police, prison system and the army, so they throw everyting against or heroes. Helicopter, motorcycles (How is that effective? Apparently it's pretty much the most effective assault vehicles known to man..) and they have international reach.
And I could no longer invest in this movie. Of course escapism and suspension of belief is a factor in all action movies, but when politics, feminism, forced representation and social indoctrination trumps a decent script with entertaining visuals, most audiences lose interest pretty soon.
We don't pay for a lecture in marginalized, fringe theory, we pay to be entertained. IF you have an original and insightful lesson, the better, but it is not at all a requisite. And let's face it, Hollywood is not the platform for insightful and nuanced politics. The sooner the movie industry remembers that simple fact, the sooner they can make some good money again, and reclaim their relevancy.
- josechr
- Jun 16, 2023