The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Extraction' | TV Concierge

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Shea Serrano tells Jason Concepcion why 'Extraction,' Netflix's latest action movie starring Chris Hemsworth and produced by the Russo brothers, is the best movie he has seen in 2020. Hosts: Jason Concepcion and Shea Serrano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And welcome to TV concierge, a daily podcast with Ringer helps you navigate the extremely crowded TV landscape. My name is Jason Concepcion, and today I am joined by my colleague, New York Times bestselling author, Shea Serrano. Yes, sir. And we're here to talk about the new Netflix action movie extraction, starring an international cast headed up by Chris Hemsworth, Goldschiff de Farhani, Rudolfs-Jaiswal, directed by Sam Hargrave, and written and produced by the Russo brothers, adapted from their 2014 graphics. novel. See you a nod. Written with Andy Parks. Shea, pitch me on extraction. Extraction is the best movie I've seen in 2020.

I fucking love it. Wow! I love it down. Kaya, shut the mics off, shut the studio down, turn the electricity off, we're done. It's over. The podcast is over. That's all you need is. I don't know.

I don't know if this was because I went into it like a little bit expecting it to not be great. because I had just, I had recently watched Spinscher Confidential. Did you watch this one with Mark Wahlberg? Yes, I did. And I was, I was expecting for this to be good and fun and like, it was, it was, it was not any of those things. It was really boring and like sucky to watch. So I don't know, I was maybe expecting this to be a version of that. And it absolutely was not.

This did all of the things that I need for a Netflix action movie to do. I had so much fun watching it. There were like parts in there. where I'm saying like, oh shit, like that's a cool trick. That's a neat thing. Oh, wow, that's a good fight. And it just kept going, going, going. There was never like a bad part of the movie.

Did you love this movie? I liked it. I thought, you know, like here. Hold on. Okay. Hold on. The story is this. Ovi is the son of Ovi Sr.

played by Pankaj Tripathu, who's a drug dealer, drug kingpin. His son, Ovi Jr., is. is kidnapped by the henchmen of a competing drug dealer and they're setting up a hosses situation. So Ovi Senior, his organization hires Chris Hemsworth, whose character's name is like one of the all-time great recent action guy names. Throw it out there. Tyler Rake.

Tyler Rake. Tyler Rake is like an ex-spec-op. current mercenary, you know, private military guy for hire who is contracted out to rescue OV. Jr. and extract him. And he's got a whole team behind him. But of course, things go drastically sideways. OV. Seniors organization actually doesn't want to pay Tyler. So they kind of try to double cross him. And now between a rock and a hard place, Tyler Rake and OV. Jr. have to just kind of improvise on the fly and there's like some strange bedfellows, some interesting alliances take place.

Um, that's basically your story, which to be 100% I didn't really, I didn't care about just like more fights. That to me, that's what it was. It's just like, let me see the fights. I cared about the story. I love the story. I thought it was, I thought the story was pretty good. I will say that this is like a part of the recent trend in, uh, Netflix movies where they're

kind of like churning out the. very accessible, high pedigree, fun to watch action movies, starting with John Wu's Manhunt. We had J.C. Chandor's Triple Frontier, Michael Base Six Underground recently. You mentioned Spencer Confidential, directed by Peter Berg. And now the Russo Brothers with stuntman turned director Sam Hargrave. It was, you know, it's very reminiscent of very many movies. it's kind of like what if Thor was in the raid and cut off a guy's head with a knife?

What else do you need? What else do you need? Some of these action scenes are pretty incredible. There's like a 12-13-minute chase scene in the middle of it. That's the best part of the movie. That uses a lot of those kind of like, you know, Gareth Evans' kind of like whip pans

to stitch together these like takes so it looks like one long kind of fluid action scene. And if that's your thing, welcome, because this is your movie. That's exactly my thing when I'm watching an action movie like this. Listen, I got pulled in

when the guy says, this is a version of the line. He says I didn't write the exact line down because I couldn't even tweet while the movie was on, which is how I knew that this was a good movie. I wanted to see every single frame of it. But the one guy says, there's a guy who does this kind of work or something like that.

And then that's how we get into the, into Thor's character. When we're like, we bring this guy in and he goes and rescues. He goes and rescues the kid. Like when he says that, when he's like, oh, there's a guy who does this kind of work. I'm like, fuck yes, here we go. And then the chase scene you mentioned, that was the exact part when the camera comes around and you're like following along with the car. And then it goes into the car.

And you're now in the backseat with Thor and with a kid. When it went in the backseat, that's when I said, oh, that's a, that's a cool trick. I like that. They're doing, like, a good job here. And then it just kept on going, not just a chasing, but then we have the fight with Thor and the other, like, ex-special forces guy who's trying to get the kid. And they're just fucking going at it. Yeah, Saju, played by Rodman Huda. Yeah.

So you and I have had this conversation many times where we're talking about, like, you see a person in a movie and you go like, I need more of this person's stuff. He was the guy in this movie for me. I'm like, oh, I need this guy. And as many movies as we can get them as fast as possible, please. Are you talking about Randy Puda playing Sajou? Yes, yes, yes. He was really good. Their fights.

Now, the fighting is, I would liken it to the Donnie Yen movie Flashpoint. It's a lot of like, mostly like MMA kind of inspired stuff. It's not like the raid where it's a lot of martial artsy kind of, you know, Muay-inspired fighting. It's a lot of like arm locks. And then because Chris Hemsworth is literally a giant human being. He's huge. He's just like, he's just like picking up people and slamming their heads into counters. You forget how big he is because you're used to seeing him standing next to the Hulk.

Yeah. And now he's standing next to a normal person. And you're like, oh shit, you're a foot taller than everybody else. Just picking up people and throwing them into stuff. And you're just like, yes, I give you. me more of this. So from that perspective, it was, it was really almost like a throwback, almost like an 80s throwback to these like huge action stars to see a guy the size of Chris Hemsworth taking part

in these action scenes where he's not super powered. He's just like a huge guy who was very skilled. So it's like more of a brutal, like less of a balletic fighting style, but very effective. And there's a great fight with him and David Harbour. of this. Yes. That is just like two gigantic human beings wrecking like a house. Yeah.

It's good. Every part of this movie is just fun to watch. And then we also like add into this that Hemsworth is a, he's a good actor. Like you forget that he's good actor because you're so used to seeing him in the Marvel stuff where he doesn't have to do a lot of anything besides like say some jokes and take his shirt off. But you see him in here like the one scene where he's sitting with the kid and he's like where they talk, talking about his own, his background of what drove him here and his own child that he lost.

He's just sitting there tearing up and you're like, oh, God. And then the kid is fantastic in the movie as well. Ovi, played by Rudrax-Jadai as well. He was, I think probably the best, like, actual acting in the entire movie is, is him. He brought a lot to it is more than just, like, the scared kid who's, like, a long for the ride. It's not like a baby Yoda situation. Like, there's an actual, like, give and take. And no shots at maybe Yoda who I love.

But really, probably the best performance in the whole movie. Yeah, he's great. The main bad guy is great. The kid who plays Farhad, who's going to be the eventual new bad guy, is really good. I was absolutely blown away by how good this movie was. I couldn't, I couldn't believe it. I watched it again this morning because I watched it. I watched it with Laramie last night.

She was doing her work. On her computer. She's in graduate school right now. So she's doing her work. Wasn't hardly paying attention to it. And I'm sitting there. And all she's hearing is just me going like, oh, fuck. Oh, shit.

That was dope. The ones that I'm going to, I already know, go back and like rewatch just by themselves. We talked about the chase scene. I love that. The other one that was like really clever. And like 40% funny is when Hemsworth ends up in a fight with a group of kids with Farhad and the other ones. And he's just slapping all of the kids. And it starts out, it starts out like that Mr. Miyagi fight when they redid karate kid and he won't hit the kids.

He's just making them hit themselves. It starts out like that. And then Hemsworth just gets frustrated. And he just fucking starts smacking them like as hard as he can't with his big pancake sized hand. Yeah. Just like a frying pan. He's hitting them with car doors and shit. I was sitting there.

I just, man, we could do this for 45 minutes and I'm going to just keep saying how much fun is. movie was one thing to note here is directed by sam hargrave who uh is a long time stunt choreographer did a lot of the marvel movies and as we saw with the wick movies directed by craig steelsky and david leach two long time uh stunt choreographers when you let the stunt people right get behind the camera the action is impeccable how scared are the other movie directors now when they're like oh shit they can do this better than we can. Because that's exactly what I thought. As soon as the movie was over, pull out my phone.

I see, okay, directed by Sam Hargrave. Let me see what else he's directed. No other movies. This is his first one. First feature. He's a stuntman who's done all of these other ones. And that's the first thing I thought too was, oh shit, this is like another chance to Hellski situation.

Give every stuntman in Hollywood the chance to make a movie. Because what's the other one? Atomic blonde. Atomic blonde is another one of those, yes. You're like, okay, I love these guys. I love the work that they're doing. Let's get more of this. And it's Tommy Blonde, similar to extraction in that it's kind of like, what's going on?

Okay, never mind. They're fighting again. It's fine. Just let them fight. Just let them fight. Just let them fight. Any closing thoughts on extraction, Chey? No, I think everybody should watch this.

Also, I don't know if this was on purpose or not, but the scene where we first see Thor jumps down, splashes into the water from like 100 feet up in the air and sits at the bottom. It was as soon as I saw this Jason, I was like, do you remember they do that in Kickboxer? Yes. John Claude Van Damme, he goes to the bottom of the whale and then sits cross-legged down there, like meditating. Give it to me. Give me more. I'm going to eat it all.

I'm going to eat it all. That reminded me of like Kyle Corver. Carrying the stones? Yeah, small forward Kyle Corver, who's off-season workout. routine involves carrying stones like off the coast of Japan underwater. Last question before we end. We're going to end it right now. Yes or no.

Did Thor live? Is that him in the last shot we see when he comes up? You think so? I don't think so. I hope so. I'm praying. Please, God, let him be alive. He's absolutely alive.

And here's my reasoning for why he's alive. One, he's dead. You don't do. So this movie. The movie opens with like a media. Yeah, it opens Meteor Res in the middle of basically the end of the movie. It ends with a scene from the end of the movie where it was so it lets you know already. Okay, Tyler Rake is going to be in danger towards the end of this movie.

He might not live. If he dies, you show the body. One. Two, Russo Brothers have basically never made a movie where there wasn't a sequel. Really? Their whole career is sequel movies. Well, I'm, I'm praying. They're going to do it again.

They're going to bring it back. Please God. And let me tell you, Chris Hemsworth. Please, Russo Gods. Yes, Chris Hemsworth looked like he had a grand old time making this movie. So I think he's alive. I think they're bringing him back. That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying. And that's all for today on behalf of myself, Shea, super producer, Kaya McMullen. Thanks to listening to TV concierge on the Ringer Podcast Network.