Extraction II (2023)

Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) miraculously survived his injuries and is recovering in Austria when a nameless man (Idris Elba) appears at his home.  He offers him a job.  Tyler isn't interested until the man says that Tyler's ex-wife is the client.  The Radiani brothers are drug dealers in Georgia (the country, not the state).  The younger brother has been incarcerated and, thanks to the influence of his brother, his wife and children have a cell nearby.  The wife is Tyler's ex-wife's sister.  Tyler accepts the job without first consulting with Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani), who normally arranges contracts.

After 6 weeks of training, Tyler, Nik, and crew are in Georgia.  Tyler infiltrates the prison and extracts the wife, Ketevan, and children, Sandro & Nina.  Sandro, an angsty teenager, wants to know about his father.  Inevitably, the alarm sounds and the most epic series of fight scenes during a prison riot ensue.  Once out of the prison, now they must evade Radiani's goons, who have had time to intercept.  Action!  Action!  Action!

The movie has more action than story.  The villain gets a grim backstory that tells of his abusive father and drug dealing uncle.  He has grown up to be a very hard man who cannot forgive or let go.  He is more than willing to sacrifice every man in his organization for revenge.  The story of Tyler's son is expanded and his wife, Mia (Olga Kurylenko), is introduced.  Nik, who was mostly a behind-the-scenes manager in the last outing, is a field operative here.  The story does have some weaknesses, especially how blind Tyler and Nik are to the angsty Sandro.  How do you allow him to access a phone?  You would think that extraction experts would know about Stockholm Syndrome and the like.

This is a high-octane action movie.  Like its predecessor, it knows what it is and delivers a smorgasbord gunbattles, fisticuffs, car chases, and more.  Great popcorn fun and highly recommended.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

It is 1959.  A man checks into a motel and commences to rearrange the furniture, pull up the carpet, remove the floorboards, and drop a bag into the resulting hole.  He then neatly replaces the boards, reinstalls the carpet, and puts the furniture back in place.  Then there is a knock on the door.  He opens the door and let's the other man in.  The man shoots him and searches the room but fails to find the bag.

Ten years later, several people arrive at the El Royale, a motel near Lake Tahoe that happens to be right on the state line.  Half the rooms are in California, and half are in Nevada.  Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) appears to be absent-minded but is quite friendly.  Laramie Sullivan (Jon Hamm), a vacuum salesman, has stayed at the motel before and offers some background while they wait for the mysteriously absent motel staff.  Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), a singer, clearly wants to have no interaction with the others.  Lastly, a woman with attitude (Dakota Johnson) arrives and refuses to give her name.  Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman), the motel's only employee, finally appears in a disheveled state.  He offers a description of El Royale that is mostly a repeat of what Laramie offered.  After that, each person is given a key to various rooms.

When the action kicks off, the story is told from the point of view of each character, often referred to by their room number.  This always involves overlapping, so that the same event might be viewed several times from different points of view.  Also, the switch from character to character often begins with a flashback that explains what happened prior to arriving at the El Royale.  Though there was trouble enough with those already at the hotel, Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth) and his band of goons arrive.  One of the people at the motel crossed him and he has arrived to settle that account.

Of course, the coincidence that all of these people should arrive at this motel on the same day is ludicrous.  Also, based on what we learn when Miles' backstory is revealed, earlier events don't make sense.  Likewise, the actions of some characters are obviously stupid as that is what the plot requires: I'm looking at you, Jon Hamm.  I guess that goes for Jeff Bridges too; you couldn't wait until tomorrow to just rent the other room yourself?  What's the hurry?  The point of view filming allows characters to misinterpret events and take detrimental action, thus triggering bad times.

Overall, an entertaining movie.  Good popcorn fun.

Extraction (2020)

Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) is the son of a Mumbai drug lord.  Though his father is currently in prison, Ovi lives in a mansion and has personal bodyguards.  Despite warnings of coming straight home from school by his father's chief lieutenant, Saju (Randeep Hooda), Ovi dares to go to a club at night to meet some friends.  This proves disastrous as he is abducted by a rival drug lord who demands a ransom that will ruin Ovi's father.  Saju gets the blame for Ovi's kidnapping and is ordered to recover Ovi without paying a ransom or his son will be killed.

Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is an Australian mercenary who served multiple tours in Afghanistan.  He accepts the job of recovering Ovi from Dhaka in Bangladesh.  With the support of a crack team, he arrives 'alone' to pay the ransom after he sees Ovi alive.  Once Ovi is thus located, the non-stop action begins.  Tyler proves to be a combat monster, a John Wick-type character who overcomes wave after wave of enemies.  Not only does he have to fight the goons of the rival drug lord, he also has to battle Saju's forces who intend to snag Ovi without paying Tyler.  Then the local police and even the military join the fray.

High adrenaline action film with great combat choreography.  Unsurprisingly, the director is a veteran stuntman who worked in Deadpool, Avengers, Thor: Ragnarok, Atomic Blonde, and a long list of successful action-packed blockbusters.  Lots of fun.  Recommended.

In the Heart of the Sea

Ron Howard's latest film is a fictionalized version of the true story that was the basis for Herman Melville's epic Moby Dick.  The movie opens in 1850 when Melville (Ben Wishaw) meets with the last survivor of the Essex, Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson).  So, right out the gate the story ignores history.  In fact, both First Mate Chase (died 1869) and Captain Pollard (died 1870) were still living as were several others.  Melville has chosen the cabin boy as his primary source.  Nickerson begins his tale in 1819 by explaining how Captain George Pollard Jr. (Benjamin Walker) and Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) had only just met (in fact, this was not their first whaling voyage together).  Young Tom Nickerson (Tom Holland) signed on just before the Essex set sail.  The first encounter for the unhappy crew was a storm that caused considerable damage, the responsibility for the damage clearly laid at Pollard's feet.  After a year of sailing, they have hardly any whale oil but are told by some Spanish whalers of a vast number of whales thousands of miles out to sea but also mention a murderous white whale who sank their ship.  Desperate, the Essex sets out and finds more than enough whales to fill the hold with oil.  However, a white whale attacks the Essex, sinking it.  Using the whaleboats with jury-rigged sails, the crew takes three months to return to civilization.  The movie has the whale track them during this three month journey and kill some more of them.  Only Chase's act of not throwing a harpoon convinces the whale to let them go in peace.  Uh huh.

 

The story of a whaling ship being sunk by a whale and the survivors having to eat their dead crewmates in order to survive wasn't exciting enough.  Owen Chase wrote an account of the events in 1821 that the real Melville used as inspiration, which makes the Melville-Nickerson interview mostly pointless.  There was no hidden story that Melville was uncovering 30 years after the events.  Though virtually every character we see has made a living through whaling, there is a strong anti-whaling message in the movie.  The whale is the hero and the characters are deserving of their fate.

 

The CGI was very disappointing and even distracting.  The dolphins leaping in the water, the gloomy skyline from Nantucket, the backdrop from the Chase home are all really bad.  When it was purely CGI, such as the whales underwater, it was not so bad but whenever the actors were in front of a green screen, it was obvious.  The worst of it was when the whaleboats were on a "Nantucket sleighride" and it was 'filmed' from a camera that was catching the glare of the sun and getting splashed.  Though clearly intended to immerse the viewer, it had the reverse effect.  Really, who wants to get splashed in the face while a flashlight is shining in your eyes?

 

The tacked on Melville research story is mostly a waste of time and only serves to interrupt the voyage of the Essex.  If there is a desire to explain that the Essex is the inspiration for the Pequod, then just say that up front:

 

The adventure that inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick!

 

Look at that, I just shaved twenty minutes from the film.  This would also lift the constant feeling of dread that assails the film.  Some added humor that didn't involve young Nickerson vomiting would have been nice.  Maybe provide some more likable characters so that the audience cares that they survive.  There is a great story here, as Melville's efforts attest, but Howard failed to tell it.  The white whale as avenging angel story arc undercut the harrowing tale of survival.  Really, the whalers got what was coming to them for engaging in such a barbarous trade!  Is it any wonder the movie flopped?

 

Skip this and watch Moby Dick instead.  I particularly enjoyed Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab in the 1998 version.  Gregory Peck even had a cameo.