Arunava Bhattacharya

A very average movie that proves interesting casting, great visuals and visionary makers are no substitute for a good script and story line. In a bid to bring Indian and Bangladeshi audience on board to Netflix the makers forgot about creating a captivating story. It's cast of Chris Hemsworth, David Harbor and Randeep Hooda cannot save the movie that has a story with too many loopholes. I am not sure why Priyanshu Painyuli was cast as a fearsome Bangladeshi drug lord when he clearly didn't look or sound like one. The prime antagonist looked more like a local pimp and pick pocket than a drug lord. The makers didn't do much research on the country where most of the story is based in and that is proved from the weird Bengali Dialogues that sounded nothing like any of the dialects of East or West Bengal. Another factor why Extraction failed is because even though it is a mercenary story we barely see any survival tricks of similar movies like we saw in Rambo, Taken or the Shooter. The audience is provided no background whatsoever into the life of Tyler Rake. In the beginning we see him as gun for hire, the next scene we see him suddenly trying to defend the boy (Why??). There is essentially no strong antagonist that matches to match Tyler Rake toe-to-toe with similar skillsets, tactics or prowess. Randeep Hooda could have been used in this situation but again the story had a few unnecessary twists and turns and ends up being an ally to Tyler rather than his foe which would have been much more interesting. While this story could have been much interesting and even could have launched a whole franchise like Rambo but alas it's a missed opportunity to say the least.

Ben Mendels and Cynthia Erivo's performance might just save the show but the overall pace is too slow and unnecessarily stretched into 10 episodes. I liked the Dark and intimidating theme of the show which did justice to the source material but the pacing is tad slow which make it very difficult to watch.