Sam Hargrave’s Extraction is on the verge of making Netflix history.
Earlier this month, the Big N announced that Extraction, a hardboiled action movie featuring the God of Thunder himself, Chris Hemsworth, was “on its way” to becoming the biggest-ever Netflix film premiere, with an estimated 90 million households (!) sitting down to watch Hemsworth’s Tyler Rake in the first four weeks of release.
Extraction also serves as a vehicle for Chris Hemsworth to flex his acting chops beyond the confines of the MCU, and it’s fair to say that, once he’s ready to put down a certain hammer, Hemsworth has an exciting action career lying in wait. Indeed, the Netflix original included a couple of pretty powerful scenes in which Tyler Rake, the hardened mercenary capable of wiping out an entire army, revealed his emotional scars – specifically those caused by the death of his six-year-old son.
For his part, Hemsworth was able to cry on cue, and recently revealed how, exactly, he approached such a delicate scene, saying:
Any time there’s an emotional scene, you’ve got to try and find some way of connecting to it, or something you can draw upon. Sometimes it may be completely out of the realm of your experience, so you just try and find something else that causes you pain or emotion and draw upon that. I was shooting this film for about three months and was missing my family like crazy. I hadn’t seen my kids for weeks and weeks.
Having filmed across Ahmedabad and Mumbai in November of 2018, before shifting to Ban Pong, Ratchaburi and Thailand some months after, Chris Hemsworth and the rest of the team were away from home quite a bit during the production of Extraction.
And being separated from his family proved to be the fuel he needed to shed a few tears during his scene with Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), as Hemsworth told his Instagram followers:
That particular day [of shooting] I was certainly missing them a little extra, and I was able to use some of that. I think for me, it’s about letting go in those moments and just trying to allow it organically to surface and not to force it too much. You have to be willing to take a risk and it doesn’t always work, that’s the truth. You build up your instincts to the best you can.
Extraction is now streaming on Netflix, and despite staring down death in the face during the final act, it seems Tyler Rake’s journey is far from over – in fact, it’s just beginning.