Extraction 2 Director Explains Singapore Passport Cameo: The Writer "Is A Huge Fan Of The Country”
Extraction 2 director Sam Hargrave finally responded to our query.
Before Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One became the action movie du jour (at least for the next few weeks), there was Netflix’s Extraction 2.
Much has been said about the action sequel’s 21-minute one-take — or oner sequence — where Chris Hemsworth’s mercenary Tyler Rake and his comrades-in-arms break in and out of a Georgia prison, a breathlessly exhilarating escape involving a car pursuit, gun battles, knife fights, choppers, and a runaway train.
Stand tall: Anthony Russo, Chris Hemsworth, and Sam Hargrave at Netflix's Extraction 2 New York premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on June 12, 2023.
But what really caught the attention of, er, trainspotters is a blink-and-you’ll-miss scene after said fracas (cue to 57:05), where Rake’s team rush to prep forged papers for their quarry — a warlord’s estranged wife and two children — and get them “out on a plane in six hours”.
Their passport of choice: Singapore.
Red alert: Someone call ICA! On the next episode of Point of Entry…
After we saw the passport, we dropped director Sam Hargrave a note the next day (June 19) on his Instagram but it wasn’t until last week, with Netflix’s help (thanks!) that we heard from the stunt-coordinator-turned-helmer.
Hey, better late than never, right?
The Singapore passport cameo “was Joe Russo’s idea,” said Hargrave on Zoom from New York. “He is a huge fan of the country — awesome place, awesome people.”
Russo, who wrote the Extraction 2 screenplay and co-produced it with his brother Anthony, was in Singapore in 2018 to promote Avengers: Infinity War (which the siblings directed) alongside cast members Robert Downey Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch and Karen Gillan.
There's another reason: Singapore has the most powerful passport in the world.
Per the latest Henley Passport Index, which measures visa-free access to 227 destinations across the world, Singapore ranks No.1 with 192 destinations, followed by Germany, Italy, and Spain, all tied at 190. Austria, Finland, France, Japan, Luxembourg, South Korea, and Sweden allow visa-free access to 189 destinations. The index includes 199 passports.
“It was a logical step for our characters to illicitly construct Singapore passports for the family so they could travel to a lot of places without a lot of hassle,” Hargrave added.
Hargrave himself hasn’t been to Singapore but “it’s on my bucket list”.
Since we had Hargrave on the line, we couldn’t resist asking him about the viral reactions to Rake taking cover behind a ladder to avoid being shot by a chopper during the 21-minute oner (cue to 42:24).
Was it an unintended blunder?
“I wouldn’t call it necessarily a blunder,” Hargrave explained. “It wasn’t as much him hiding behind a thin metal ladder as it was just him in that space, trying to make himself as flat as possible [by leaning against the wall of the train container].”
“He didn’t really have many places to hide,” he continued. “Nothing’s really going to stop those bullets. If he hid behind one of those plastic crates, the bullets would go right through. He was just trying to make himself small to get out of the way as much as possible. But if he gets hit, he gets hit.”
“I did read [the comments] and that makes me at least smile,” he said. “I wouldn’t consider it a blunder but I can see how it could be seen that way. So, thanks for pointing that out.”
Man of action: Hargrave, who lists “Jackie Chan’s pantheon of exceptional movies in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s” as well as classics like Point Break, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Rambo trilogy (“we don’t talk about four and five — they don’t really exist”) as his favouite action flicks, said he’s looking forward to Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. “The franchise keeps improving on each previous movie,” he said. “They just keep getting better, bigger, more impressive and exciting. Tom [Cruise] is an amazing filmmaker and performer. He understands action.”
Next for the one-time stunt coordinator for Captain America: Civil War (and countless Marvel productions) and Atomic Blonde is The Last Frontier, a 10-episode Apple TV+ series starring Jason Clarke as a US marshal tasked with rounding up inmates who escape after a prison transport plane crashes into the remote Alaska wilderness (think Con Air meets Northern Exposure?). Hargrave is slated to direct the pilot.
He is also, of course, developing Extraction 3, which was announced a day after Extraction 2’s June 16 premiere.
Hargrave said it’ll be challenging topping the oners in the first two Extraction movies. (The first film, which he also directed, featured a 12-minute non-stop sequence.) Is he gunning for a feature-length oner a la 1917?
“Well, anything’s possible,” he said. “Without doing the whole movie as a oner, what else can we do? In the first two Extraction films, the oner came at a certain point in the movie. Maybe we change that. Do we want to start the movie with a oner?”
But Hargrave will cross the bridge when he comes to it. And when the script lands on his desk, he’ll hopefully come up with something that’s “going to satisfy fans, subvert expectations and provide people with a new and exciting experience.”
Extraction 2 is on Netflix.
Photos: Jasin Boland/Netflix, TPG News/Click Photos
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