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| Jackman |
Extraction: (Henry Jackman/Alex Belcher) The
purpose of the 2020 Netflix original film
Extraction was for
first-time director and veteran stuntman Sam Hargrave to show people
performing awesome stunts in a violent action environment. And that was
all he accomplished, because everything else about the movie was
unnecessary and gruesome, depicting Bangladesh and its capital, Dhaka,
in a wretched light and glorifying all the worst Western stereotypes
about how terrible a place it is. (Ironically, the movie was shot almost
entirely in Thailand, as Westerners wouldn't know the difference.) The
plot involves two rival drug lords of the region and the kidnapping of
one of their sons. Chris Hemsworth is a mercenary hired to extract the
boy, extending the white savior concept as he leaves trails of bodies in
his wake. The angry, repeatedly double-crossed white dude must kick
godless Bangladeshi ass, and don't expect a clean, happy ending. Movies
like
Extraction are the kind of pointless, violent entertainment
that makes racist, ill-educated Americans hate the world and collect
more weapons, with nothing redeeming about the script and no depiction
of how to improve the world except by efficiently killing brown people.
Unfortunately,
Extraction became the highest viewed Netflix
original film of all time and was among the service's most popular
attractions of 2020, perfect entertainment for aggrieved Donald J. Trump
voters stuck at home because of "unfair" pandemic lockdowns. Composer
Henry Jackman and his associate, Alex Belcher, who has been receiving
formal co-compositional credit on Jackman scores as of late, had worked
with producers Joe and Anthony Russo on 2019's underwhelming
21
Bridges and return here. The result of their efforts is exactly as
expected for the topic and the budget: a grim, Remote Control-inspired,
atmospheric score with aspirations to emulate John Powell's production
in exotic chase thrillers. If the film is designed to make you feel
worse about the world, then Jackman and Belcher succeed in providing
music that accomplishes the same. As music, there's really nothing of
interest to behold in its instrumentation and constructs. The composers
earned their paycheck and nothing more. But as a generic tool of
atmosphere, it does indeed drop a turd in any punchbowl as well, so if
you have a dire need for music to turn your day sour, Jackman and
Belcher offer you this remarkably bleak tool of disillusion and
despair.
If you're a composer approaching
Extraction, how
do you ensure that you pump up the testicles of viewers without
distracting their brains? The standard string ensemble for endless
ostinatos, especially for the lower string players, is a must. A lead
electronic cello manipulated to sound exotic is also required. When that
doesn't sound fearsome enough, go for the electric guitar or some
sampled, equivalent growl. Then you have to layer all the looped
percussion and sprinkle in a variety of synthetic grinding and thumping
noises. Occasional French horns add some muscle during action scenes. A
piano will provide the totality of warmth. Together, these elements must
be mixed together in a dreary haze of bass-heavy droning, intimacy
replaced by near-silent ambiguity. Tonality is largely absent until
"Finale," this score so far removed from something like
Green
Zone that it can't even be deemed an amateurish imitation of that
effective Powell take on the same idea. The darkness of
Extraction required primordial groaning in its music, with the
catharsis at the end, "Finale," badly borrowing from Hans Zimmer's
Inception as others have shamelessly done before. There are
actually a couple of themes in
Extraction, one existing for a
sense of family for both the boy and Hemsworth's character, who also
lost a son. This series of note pairs is most often performed by the
solo piano and is established in "Ovi" and "Rake & Nik" before
repetition but not development in "Families & Loss." It breaks the
action at 2:36 in "Bridge Battle" before aimlessly meandering through
"Finale" and "Epilogue" as if nothing important happened. Even the
creepiness of the closing swimming pool scene in the epilogue is not
provided any intelligence by the composers. Meanwhile, a descending line
serving as the theme of the film's action is exposed late in
"Extraction" and continues in "Rake's Distraction" and "Bridge Battle,"
both performances offering the rare brass in the score. This idea
informs the
Inception rip in "Finale." On album, the score is a
sullen, angry, and at times inaudible work of meaningless sound. The
listening experience mostly seethes without remorse or solace, a cue
like "Asif Shares With Farhad" the most pointless film music moment of
the year while the marginally more memorable battle and finale cues are
hapless rip-offs of much better execution elsewhere. A manipulated
string instrument does not make the score ethnically authentic, either.
The two suites to close the album are redundant. The whole thing is
redundant with Jackman's
Captain Phillips, which tells you all
you need to know. What a waste of airspace.
* @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Henry Jackman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.8
(in 25 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.78
(in 7,697 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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