Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Extraction’ stars Chris Hemsworth in the role of an emotionally scarred mercenary who finds himself in a precarious position when he is tasked with rescuing the son of a drug lord. The film features an international cast with Sam Hargrave and the Russo brothers, who have previously collaborated on various films of the ‘Avengers’ franchise, behind the scenes. It offers a lot of action and thrill in a place that had not featured before in Western cinema in this particular style. If you are wondering how they managed to pull it off, here’s the answer. Here are all the places where ‘Extraction’ was filmed.
Where Was Extraction Filmed?
‘Extraction’ follows the story of a mercenary who is tasked with saving a drug lord’s son. His work takes him to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and most of the action takes place there. Initially, the story was set in Ciudad del Este, but Hargrave and the Russo brothers wanted to capture the part of the world which the audience hadn’t seen before on such a big scale. After giving it a lot of thought, they eventually settled on Bangladesh.
For the filming, they turned towards India and Thailand. While these countries stood in for Bangladesh, the film still needed the authenticity of the real location. Director Sam Hargrave had scouted Dhaka while he was still in-between ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’. Before setting out to bring together the actors, he, along with his crew, took some shots of the city.
Mumbai and Ahmedabad, India
Rescuing Ovi takes Tyler through the crowded and vibrant city of Dhaka in Bangladesh. The atmosphere of the place seeps into the urgency of the characters to make it out of there while pushing their way out of packed streets. The fight sequences also take place in the middle of a teeming market. To recreate this environment, the crew turned toward the cities of Ahmedabad and Mumbai. For creating the claustrophobia for Tyler and Ovi, who get stuck in a city that is thrown into lockdown, the locales of Dharavi and Byculla in Mumbai were used. The crew also explored the areas of Ahmedabad which fit the requirements perfectly.
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In the process of shooting, the swarms of fans that collected around them allowed the filmmakers to get into the mood of their story, while also being overwhelmed by the sheer number of live audiences they had to perform in front of. Despite this, filming in India came with a number of challenges.
In an interview with the New York Times, director, Sam Hargrave, expressed the difficulties they had to face. According to him, the locales were not used to the shooting of “a lot of these big action films and that became a problem early on just because of the levels of bureaucracy there. Films like ‘Lion’ have used India pretty well in terms of found footage, like show up with hidden camera, but it was a bit different for us as we had a six-foot-four blonde guy with a machine gun. We needed that level of control, which they were not used to.” To counter these challenges, they had to look for other viable locations, which they found in Thailand.
Thailand
In Thailand, the crew took to some of the most common locations that have been used in films before, but the challenge for them was to give the look of a completely different place. Production designer Philip Ivey’s challenge was to paint Thailand in the chaotic colors of Dhaka. From the bridges to the marketplaces, they had to take care of the little details that would allow the viewers to believe they were indeed in Dhaka. Places like Ban Pong, Ratchaburi, and Nakhon Pathom feature in various scenes of the film.
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