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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Extraction (Henry Jackman/Alex Belcher)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you fell in love with the magnificent grandeur and
ethnic beauty of Henry Jackman's music for Captain Phillips, in
which case this work will induce a similarly warm, tingling feeling in
your loins.
Avoid it... if you wonder why so many Americans feel aggrieved, isolated, and misunderstood; this bleak, angry music helps feed their worst inclinations about race and violence.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. *
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 67:53
NOTES & QUOTES:
There exists no official packaging for this album.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Extraction are Copyright © 2020, BMG Rights Management and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 1/10/21 (and not updated significantly since). |
