It’s no death-defying leap to state that we are currently in the middle of a blockbuster action revolution, in which former stunt performers and coordinators-turned-feature-directors have reminded us why we love explosive scenes, sharply executed fights, and over-the-top brawn. Although movie stars still help sell in these projects (often by boasting how much they do their own stunts), it’s the filmmakers who are now the real ass-kickers. After the likes of thrilling projects like Chad Stahelski’s “John Wick” films, David Leitch’s “Atomic Blonde” and “Deadpool 2,” and J.J. Perry’s “Day Shift,” add Sam Hargrave’s “Extraction 2” to the list. This gripping, fired-up sequel proclaims how Hargrave has even more to prove and cements him as a talent that genre junkies can believe in.
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These movies have partly been about revitalizing what makes an action hero, using characters who would have been played by Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger in past decades. Enter Tyler Rake, Chris Hemsworth’s awesomely named hero, who survived near-death at the end of “Extraction” (which was inspired by Ande Parks’ graphic novel “Ciudad”) and spends the first act of this sequel healing up. The attention to Tyler’s recharging in isolation (or “retirement,” as someone calls it) becomes a statement from Hargrave’s project—it invests in true physicality and practicality as much as it can. And thanks to Hemsworth’s dramatic control of the character, it’s not just about a sullen face. Hemsworth lets Rake (sharing a scene with farm animals) be a little funny, too.
During this slow-burn introduction, “Extraction 2” introduces a formidable villainous force in the shape of two Georgian brothers who run their uncle’s gang. One of them, Davit (Tornike Bziava), is in jail for killing a DEA agent and has forced his family to live with him in prison, which is harming his wife Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and their two kids, Sandro (Andro Japaridze) and young girl Nina (Mariami Kovziashvili). For these bad guys, it’s all about the well-being of their Nagazi gang, and they have an endless group of devoted armed soldiers to support them. The two brothers have been looking out for each other since they were boys who fled the civil war in Georgia, and Zurab (played with stark iciness by Tornike Gogrichiani) wants to protect his younger brother at all costs. 
Tyler is brought back into the mix to help extract the mother and her children (hence, you know, the title), and this mission makes for a bravura sequence by Hargrave and his crew. Unfolding over a pulse-pounding 21-minute runtime and made to look like one shot, the must-see sequence takes from underneath a prison and eventually ends on a train that’s just received a visit from a helicopter. The course of events is better left discovered by the viewer, but the cinematography by Greg Baldi (and, yes, editing by William Hoy and Alex Rodríguez) makes for a newer type of action thrill—scenes that pile on the chases and the different fighting styles, fluctuating scale and speed, while the camera hops between different points of view. Sometimes the scene follows Rake; other times, it’s watching his armed backup, siblings Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and her brother Yaz (Adam Bessa), navigate heavy fire above ground. It’s no longer about trying to fool anyone about it being in one take; it’s in relishing how a single extraordinary experience can be captured in what’s more or less real-time. 
It’s a jaw-dropping, exhilarating sequence that Hargrave doesn’t try to top. But the hunger for big, practical action remains insatiable within “Extraction 2,” and there is an uneasy and tense fight scene later at a hotel that creatively uses towering heights for skin-crawling effect, with the movie hardly breaking its deadly serious idea of what is scientifically possible or not. Like other great moments in “Extraction 2,” it is chaotic but coherent. 
Written by Joe Russo, the movie is packed with some cliches that make its non-action scenes a little slow and dialogue that only tough guys speak in movies (“I always knew there was a bully waiting for me, but not from your gun”). But the movie is held together by its emotional momentum, with stakes that are much closer to the chest than with the first film. Rake has his own personal investment in this mission, which Hemsworth delivers with sincerity and gravity, despite the quasi-clunkiness of how it fits into the overall story.
And the teenage Sandro reveals his own allegiance to his killer uncle, which makes Rake’s extraction all the more dangerous, given how he can choose to reveal their location at any moment. The emotional MVP of this movie is Japaridze, in how he shows a boy piecing together what is happening, why his father wasn’t also rescued from prison, and which loyalty he wants to go with. In a movie in which the exhilarating action is made possible by opposing teams who both deeply think they’re in the right, Sandro’s facial expressions offer a tragic layer to being confused about what side to choose. 
“Extraction 2” also gets a boost from the armed heroes who support Rake, Nik, and Yaz, who have their own soulful portrayal of sibling loyalty, albeit played out in mini-war zones. And Farahani is incredible; she deserves her own action franchise considering the force she brings in her brutal bouts, as with a brawl on the train where her close combat scrappiness makes the movie’s spectacle all the more visceral. 
It’ll be interesting to see how this action movie revolution evolves (or doesn’t) storytelling in the genre, given how much “Extraction 2” has echoes of the macho cinema from before. But thanks in part to the work of Hargrave and his similarly ambitious cast and crew, the future for the genre remains as bright as the flames put on Hemsworth in the middle of the aforementioned game-changing 21-minute one-shot. No, it’s not CGI. It’s the real deal.  [B+]