In a live Instagram Q&A posted yesterday on Netflixs YouTube channel, Extraction lead and godly mortal Chris Hemsworth answered several fan questions about his role in this springs biggest action thriller.
The Netflix original featured some of the most extravagant fight choreography of recent memory, including a 12-minute-long oner (a technique using a sequence of single takes to resemble one continuous tracking shot) that saw director Sam Hargrave strap himself to a chase car and then hand the camera through the window of Hemsworths lead vehicle.
The technical complexity helped prop up a more or less conventional action flick.
Extraction maintains a straightforward narrativethe entire-town-against-one-guy device that Hemsworth says draws from westerns and Steve McQueen filmsand it plays out like one long video game escort mission: take the kidnapped child from Point A to Point B and kill a bunch of people in between. But at the core of that mission is another emotional journey, perhaps no less cliche than its outward shoot em up, but equally demanding for Hemsworths character Tyler Rake: reckoning with the son who died as he fights to save the living, proverbial Son He No Longer Has.
Hemsworth himself is a father of three. He shot Extraction in India and Bangladesh, far from his family in Australia. Hemsworth says he drew on the distance for help in one particular scene, where an emotional Tyler reveals to Ovi why, behind all his fearless gunplay, hes not actually brave; he wasnt there for the death of his son. (The viewers learn he passed from lymphoma.)
Heres how Hemsworth broke down his breakdown:
Any time theres an emotional scene, youve 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 hadnt seen my kids for weeks and weeks. 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, its 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 doesnt always work, thats the truth. You build up your instincts to the best you can.
Its not that we havent seen Hemsworth get emotional beforeeven Thor has moments on vulnerability before the Marvel joking ensues. But the courage speech gave us something else, maybe just a reminder that Hemsworth has the emotional range to carry a film hes not outwardly, physically battling through. As much as we love those battles, were also curious to see a performance where the guns stay locked away.