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Extraction is something that the dental hospital will soon be performing on a dodgy tooth on the upper-left section of my mouth, but you don’t need to know that right now.
In this film of the same name, Harry Turner (Kellan Lutz) has recruited into the CIA just like his father, Leonard (Bruce Willis, being his usual pout-lipped self). What prompted this was when some bad guys came round ten years earlier, bumped off his mum and nearly sent him to an early grave. Now older, yet not particularly wiser, as Harry joins up, cue predictable training montage, apparently taking place in Prague, but apart from a few generic establishing shots, the rest of the scenes shot there could be anywhere.
And that matters not a jot because they’re all about to head off to Newark, New Jersey, where Bon Jovi are probably about to make a new one of their bland albums, yet all is not lost because there’s a device called Condor that, in the wrong hands, can kill all form of government communications, but will Richie Sambora seize control of it and force their new album to be streamed across all media networks in their place? And since Leonard’s been kidnapped, how many seconds will it take Harry to defy his bosses and head over there? And when the CIA send Harry’s ex, Victoria (Gina Carano), to Newark to stop him and send him home, just how ineffective do you think that will be?
Stupidly, once Condor is activated, if someone nicks it and does bad stuff with it, the only way it can be deactivated is in person, rather than remotely – which is a hell of a basic design flaw!
Naturally, there are staff who’ll disobey the orders of their bosses – thus jeapordising their own jobs – in return for helping this hot-head. It does nothing we haven’t seen before and follows well-worn tropes such as Harry coming up with a half-arsed non-plan, justifying it with “It works in the movies”. The 15-laso cert allows some nice punch-ups as opposed to a tame 12-cert that litters the film industry these days, and diminishes many a film.
Some questions to be answered:
- Will Bruce and Kellan apologise for the similar dull mess they contributed to that was The Expendables 3? What do you think.
- Will father and son find a moment to bond? What do you think.
- Will Harry and Victoria get it on and do the do? What do you think.
- Will Bon Jovi get that new album streamed everywhere with the help of Condor? No, because there’s none of their puffed-up perm-based-pop in this film, thankfully.
Oh, and one thing that didn’t make sense was the ending as bluff and double bluff all seemed to overlap to the point of ridiculousness.
Note also that you shouldn’t trust Amazon reviews: Clifton72 has given 5/5 to almost every Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment title in his ‘reviews’ on his page. I’m quite certain that this is someone from Kaleidoscope writing their own reviews!
Oh, and on further investigation, the same goes for the usernames E. Greenow, melanieandmitch and BumbleyBear.
I’ve also taken screenshots of all of this in case the accounts mysteriously disappear! Hence, there’s also a number of other, very important, questions to answer, which is as big a mystery as the Condor theft itself!
The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 theatrical anamorphic widescreen ratio and looks as good as a DVD can do. Sadly, Blu-rays weren’t available for review, but on the other hand, the film wouldn’t have been any different. Still, about the picture, compared to a Blu-ray, the DVD looks a little soft, but other than that, there are no issues.
The sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1. There’s decent audio for the shooting & fighting sections, but overall, you won’t be writing home about this one. Certainly nothing memorable in the rears, either – a shame when a car chase could’ve done with some extra pep.
As for the extras, erm… there are none.
The menu is mostly static, but a section of it shows clips from the film set to a repetitive piece of incidental music. There are no subtitles, and the bog standard 12 chapters.
Extraction is released tomorrow on Blu-ray and DVD, and click on the packshot for the full-size image.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
1 8 7 0 |
| OVERALL | 4 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 88 minutes
Studio: Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment
Cat.no.: KAL8488
Year: 2015
Released: March 14th 2016
Chapters: 12
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
Format: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Hawk Scope)
Disc Format: DVD9
Director: Steven C Miller
Producers: Randall Emmett, George Furla, Adam Goldworm and Mark Stewart
Screenplay: Max Adams and Umair Aleem
Music: Ryan Dodson
Cast:
Harry Turner: Kellan Lutz
Leonard Turner: Bruce Willis
Victoria: Gina Carano
Ken Robertson: DB Sweeney
Drake: Joshua Mikel
Theodore Sitterson: Steve Coulter
Higgins: Dan Bilzerian
Agent Stevens: Heather Johansen
Dmitri Kovrov: Roman Mitichyan
Agent Nick Purvis: Christopher Rob Bowen
Ivan: Rob Steinberg
Kris: Lydia Hull
Darryl: Tyler Jon Olson
Vinn: Nick Loeb
Sally: Sierra Love
Young Harry: Nathan Varnson
John: Richie Chance
Scott: John Dauer
Biker Bartender: Nikki BreAnne Wells
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.