The Biggest Unanswered Questions In Extraction On Netflix
There are bad days and there are terrible days. Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the primary target for both opposing forces in Extraction, is having a pretty awful day. Fortunately, he has a knight in camouflage armor to protect him in the form of Australian adonis Chris Hemsworth. Hemsworth's character in Extraction, Tyler Rake, saunters into town with the swagger of a man that's got nothing to lose. He barks orders at poor little Ovi while dragging him across town, dodging bullets and exchanging fire with some of the baddest mercenary fighters in the region.
The film's plot doesn't convolute itself too much, though it does end on a decidedly ambiguous note. It's in our nature to ponder all the lingering questions after the credits roll, and now that we've had a little distance from our first viewing, a few nagging queries remain unanswered. Here are some of the most important plot points left open at the end of Netflix's action extravaganza Extraction.
Where is Tyler Rake really from?
We demand to see Tyler Rake's long-form birth certificate. When we first meet him, he is drunkenly cliff diving in the Australian Outback. The dialogue and his backstory confessions tell us that he was simply hiding from the world in his little, chicken poop-riddled shack down under. So he's not necessarily an Aussie, and the story of how he left his dying child behind hints that he is an American, since he speaks of going off on a "third tour." Chris Hemsworth is in fact Australian, but he is obviously slapping on an American accent for the purposes of the role as Rake.
Then again, he refers to others in conversation as "mate" throughout the whole movie. Now that certainly could be something that Tyler picked up while spending time down under. Referring to friends as "mates" is most certainly not a standard American colloquialism.
Not that it matters where he is from — a hero is a hero after all — but we didn't get any ironclad answers as to Rake's country of origin. This omission leaves us wondering if a different truth will come spilling out of the burly mercenary in the sequel.
How does Asif have control of the military?
The city of Dhaka has a cold and ruthless unofficial dictator in the form of Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli). As a man with immense power in a corrupt city, he would most likely obtain control of the military and police forces by application of his obscene wealth, right? Maybe not.
The commander of the military forces stands by his side through a large portion of the movie. The immediate assumption is that he is being well paid to remain at Asif's beck and call. The Colonel's mopey, puppy-dog eyes hint at another explanation, however. We can't be sure, but the commander of the city's military forces seems trapped under the drug lord's thumb. All the orders that Asif barks at him seem to be executed with some reluctance. That suggests fear is Asif's method of control, rather than wealth.
It might be that anyone who could topple his empire is simply terrified to move against him. Or could it be that he has the Colonel's daughter locked in a dog kennel in his basement? If you think that's too far for Asif, then you are forgetting that he didn't bat an eyelash when a dismembered finger was presented to him over lunch. However he managed to finagle the levers of power in Dhaka, he's got them good and tight, and the movie doesn't deign to explain how he accomplished this.
Where are they getting all these bullets?
There are points in Extraction where — in true action-flick fashion — our heroes grab fresh mags and strap new kevlar to their chests for another round of vicious gunfighting. At a certain point, we begin to wonder what sorcery is being implemented here. Where is all this hardware coming from?
Tyler and Saju (Randeep Hooda) appear to have all the ammo they could possibly want. After each exhausted magazine, Tyler simply reaches for his vest and grabs a fresh new one. The fact that he does it with such mesmerizing efficiency can distract from the fact that his vest might actually be an heirloom passed down from a time when magic still existed. It would account for the fact that his hair always remains perfectly coifed and the sunlight tends to hit his eyes with just the right amount of refraction. We know we should suspend our disbelief on this one, but Extraction's protracted action sequences strain credulity. Where would he even keep that many extra bullets?
Why didn't Khan kill Asif sooner?
One of the biggest questions in Extraction is why Tyler Rake's partner, Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani), waited until after everything calmed down to casually walk into a diner and put a bullet in Asif's head. The drug lord is the source of all the turmoil throughout the entire movie. If his removal was so easy, why didn't she call in his number early on and save everyone a lot of grief?
Adding insult to injury is the revelation that Khan is also a killer shot. In the climactic scene, Saju and Tyler fight their way across a bridge out of the city against a literal army. Throughout the whole gun battle, Khan and her crew are waiting on the other side with guns aimed. It isn't until after Saju gets shot that she grabs a sniper rifle and takes out the enemy sniper. Given this skill, it seems like it would have been much more helpful if she had been covering them the whole time. Instead, she decides it'd be best to sit and wait while she radios them to hurry it up.
Look, a lot of things happen in the heat of battle. We get it. We're not looking to assign blame here. It's just hard not to think about how the highly capable merc could have provided sniper cover rather than making us all watch Rake tumble through the air into a shallow river.
There is certainly the question of whether or not that was a blurry shot of Tyler in the background just before the credits roll, but that mystery seems like more of an intentional set-up for a sequel than a plot hole we're dying to fill. Hopefully a few of these questions will be addressed if we ever get Extraction 2.