Extraction: The Most Difficult Shot To Film
When fans finally got their eyes on the Russo Brothers-produced Netflix original Extraction, they were blown away by the film's white-knuckle intensity. That should come as no surprise, given that director Sam Hargrave was a stunt coordinator for Avengers: Endgame and Captain America: Civil War. The Chris Hemsworth-starring film takes viewers on one man's breakneck journey to save the kidnapped son of a crime lord, and we mean "breakneck" in the most literal sense of the term.
Anybody who has seen Hemsworth's many appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe knows that the Australian actor is game to tackle crazy stunts. Even he, however, got pushed to his limits on the set of the intense movie. One stunt, in particular, was so tough to film that it had the team reshooting the scene over and over again. During a special Extraction livestream event hosted by the Russo Brothers, Hargrave, and Hemsworth, the actor revealed exactly which stunt was the hardest for him to shoot.
The stunt that took Chris Hemsworth a dozen tries to get right
The stunt in question occurred during one of the film's brutal fight scenes, which sees Hemsworth's character, Tyler Rake, taking on a group of adversaries. When Rake is cornered and needs to improvise a weapon on the fly, he ends up making a peculiar, but effective, choice: "One of the [shots] I thought was going to be so ridiculous and it was actually the hardest thing to do was the [shot] where I picked that guy up and swing his legs in and knock the other guy's head off."
Hemsworth added that there was one thing that made the tough shot a bit easier to manage. "Fortunately, the other stunt guy was quite small, so I could pick him up — pick him up and swing him."
Even though his scene partner was small, the over-the-top stunt still took many takes to get right. "We shot that 10 or 12 times," Hemsworth said. "Sam was like, 'Nah. Again, again, again.' That was the hardest workout I've ever had. But I love the shot! Every time I see the guy's head fly off to the side, it's like, 'That's pretty cool! I haven't seen that before.'"
Considering how much praise the film has gotten for its action set pieces and fight scenes, it was clearly worth it to make sure they got the wild mechanics of the stunt just right.