I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that a lot of us have spent the last few weeks doing some, or all, of the following: Losing sleep over the daily deluge of novel coronavirus (COVID-19)-related news; haranguing (and being harangued by) family members and long lost friends to set up recurring video chats; taking bets on how quickly a service secretary will be out of a job; Googling “alcohol delivery” daily; watching a hamster wash its hands; and spending so much time playing video games that “looking for loot” has become code for trying to find toilet paper at the store.
So, given that frame of mind, it’s no wonder that when I saw the new trailer for Netflix’s Extraction, my mind latched onto the upcoming flick as a pretty safe bet for some quarantine viewing when it hits the streaming service on April 24.
The film stars Chris Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, a mercenary who takes on a job in India to rescue Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord — a decision which lands Rake smack in the middle of a war between two competing criminal organizations.
Within the first minute of watching the trailer, it’s clear that the extraction doesn’t go well. The unnamed city where the operation takes place goes on lock down and a swarm of heavily armed gangsters and a bunch of other mercenaries descend upon Rake and Ovi.
The premise is basically what you’d get if the 2003 war movie, Tears of the Sun had a baby with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s recently launched free-to-play game mode, Warzone.
Absurd plot? Check. Desperate mission? Check. Running out of time to escape? Check. Outnumbered and outgunned? Check and check. Totally absurd RPG kills? Check. Unlikely to be remembered as anything other than a good way to procrastinate while working from home? Let’s leave this blank for now…
On first viewing, the trailer is also highly memeable, which, let’s be honest, is one of the few things that is universally loved and can bring us all together in these uncertain times.
https://twitter.com/ms14_tweets/status/1247497390560591872
So, if you’re looking for a way to kill an hour or so while sheltering in place, Extraction might be worth a shot. Hell, even if Rake and Ovi don’t make it out, you can take heart in knowing that the rest of us eventually will.