June 23, 2023
At the end of the first film, black-ops mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) was shot in the neck and fell into the river in Bangladesh. At the start of this sequel, Rake actually survived the gunshot, was rescued and airlifted to a hospital in Dubai to recover. When he awoke from this coma, his crewmates Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and her brother Yaz (Adam Bessa) brought him to an isolated forest cabin in snowy Gmunden, Austria for his retirement.
One day, a mysterious stranger (Idris Elba) showed up at Rake's cabin with a message from Rake's ex-wife Mia (Olga Kurylenko). Mia's sister Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and her headstrong teenage son Sandro (Andro Japaridze) and younger daughter Nina (Miriam and Marta Kovziashvili) were being held captive by her criminal husband Davit Radiani (Tornike Bziava) in his prison cell in Tkachiri, Georgia. Rake's mission was to get them out.
As the title suggested, this film was going to be about how Rake and his team broke into a Georgian prison to extract a woman and her two children out. Of course with a teenager and a child involved, this would not be a smooth mission which would succeed at the first attempt. Soon, Davit's elder brother Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani) would also get into the action, recalling their father's firm admonition to keep his brother safe.
The action scenes in this film were heart-pounding, perfectly-choreographed chaos. First, Rake and Ketevan had to fight through throngs of Georgian jailbirds and policemen to get out of the prison, which then led to a brutal car chase on forest dirt roads, followed by a very exciting action sequence set on a moving train, with helicopters raining bullets down on them. It was highly improbable that Rake and posse lived though all this, but of course, they did.
Amidst Rake's intense fights, including one set on a glass overhang of a skyscraper, writer Joe Russo and director Sam Hargrave made sure Hemsworth could show off his dramatic chops. More details were revealed about Rake's previous life as a family man, after he said some lines in the Georgian language. Fatherhood was an important topic in the plot, which made it an appropriate release for the Father's Day weekend. 7/10.
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