Directed by Sam Hargrave
Year : 2020
Director: Sam Hargrave (former MCU stunt coordinator - Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Endgame; choreographer/camera operator of Atomic Blonde)
Country: United States (Netflix)
Screenwriter/Producer: Joe Russo (co-director of Avengers: Endgame)
Director of Photography: Newton Thomas Sigel (ASC - X-Men, Bohemian Rhapsody, Drive)
Production Designer: Philip Ivey
Camera: handheld (Hargrave operated the camera himself for many segments)
Sequence duration: ~12 minutes
Number of sequences assembled: 37
Filming time for the scene: 10 days
Taken per segment: up to 21-22
Pre-production of the plan: 4-5 months (design → location scouting → execution)
Location scouting: 8 missions, camera in hand, with the production designer
Modified vehicles: Hargrave attached to the front of a camera car; special short-wheelbase vehicle for narrow streets
Filming locations: Ahmedabad and Mumbai, India (double for Dhaka, Bangladesh) + Thailand
Budget: ~$65 million
Sequence: Extraction is Hargrave's first feature film as a director; Extraction 2 (2023) expands the concept to 14 minutes; Extraction 3 is filming in June 2026 in Australia
Dhaka, Bangladesh. Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) has just rescued Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the son of a drug lord, from his kidnappers. Everything spirals out of control. And for twelve minutes, the camera never leaves them. A car chase ensues through the crowded alleyways of Dhaka, the car hitting scooters, stalls, and parked vehicles. The camera is inside the car, then it jumps out the window, sticks to the hood, soars over the roof, lands on the other side of the street, and plunges into a stairwell. A foot chase follows across the rooftops. Rake and Ovi leap from building to building. Rake falls, gets up, and fights an opponent with a knife in an apartment. The camera follows him, jumps with him, falls with him. Back in a car. Another chase. Gunfights. Explosions. Hand-to-hand combat. And the camera, sometimes attached to the front of a car, sometimes in the hands of a stuntman jumping off a roof, still doesn't cut. Twelve minutes. Car, foot, roof, apartment, car, bridge, shootouts. Everything.
Why this scene is iconic
Hargrave summed up his vision in one sentence: "The camera becomes a character." Hemsworth didn't believe it at first: "I remember Sam saying 'make the camera a character,' and I thought, 'Yeah, okay, whatever.' Then when I saw him strapped to the front of the car, diving off a building with the stuntmen and falling down the stairs with them, I thought, 'Wow. He wasn't lying. He wasn't exaggerating.'"
The 12-minute shot wasn't planned. Joe Russo had written "an extended action sequence" inspired by 1970s thrillers, particularly the car chase in The French Connection. Hargrave took this idea and pushed it to the extreme: "What if we never cut?" The goal wasn't technical virtuosity for its own sake, but immersion and the building of the relationship between Tyler and Ovi. Hargrave explained: "You see the relationship between Tyler and Ovi grow during this scene, and that was the creative focus. The camera becomes a character, and you experience everything in real time. You're surprised when Hemsworth is surprised; you only know what he knows."
How they filmed it
Four to five months of pre-production. Eight location scouting trips through the streets of Ahmedabad and Mumbai (double-checking for Dhaka), camera in hand, with production designer Philip Ivey. Hargrave walked the locations, framed the shots, and "wove" the sequence beat by beat. Then ten days of shooting for the sequence alone, a marathon.
The sequence is composed of 37 distinct sequences, assembled by invisible cuts. Hargrave has not revealed the exact number of cuts, but he has no problem with viewers looking for them; finding the seams does not diminish the power of the shot, according to him.
What makes Extraction unique in this collection is that Hargrave operated the camera himself for much of the sequence. Not as director of photography—Newton Thomas Sigel held that role—but as a stuntman-cameraman. He was strapped to the front of a camera car during the car chases, ran with Hemsworth during the foot chases, and jumped with the stuntmen during the falls. It's the same dual role he had previously performed on Atomic Blonde (2017), where he choreographed AND filmed Charlize Theron's stair sequence, except here the scale is monumental: 12 minutes instead of 10, outdoors instead of in a building, in the traffic of an Indian city instead of on a Budapest set.
Hargrave and Sigel had established a visual language for the Dhaka scenes: "very visceral, almost documentary-like, very energetic. Not shaky cam where you can't understand anything." When Hargrave considered using a crane arm for some camera movements, he rejected the idea: "Too stable. I have to be in it." Modified vehicles were custom-built; the standard camera car was too wide and heavy for some of the alleyways, so the team built a short-wheelbase vehicle to maneuver through the narrow passages.
Each segment of the sequence was filmed in up to 21 or 22 takes. Hemsworth had no respite: no B camera, no cutaways, no "rest Chris while we do a reverse shot." Hargrave described the effect: "When you see Chris, when he's tired, it helps his performance because he's really just done a minute and a half of non-stop action. It might be take 17 that you see in the final product. The looks of exhaustion and the deep breaths are real."
Hargrave chose to shoot in India rather than in a studio: "I've worked on so many films that take place in front of a green or blue screen or on a soundstage, and some are great, but there's no substitute for the feeling, for the visceral nature of being there. Of being in that environment." Each color palette was assigned to a character: green for Rake (growth), blue for Ovi (water). Sigel maintained the clarity of the action despite the handheld style, which is the difference with the post-Bourne "Chaos Cinema" that Hargrave explicitly rejected.
What to observe when reviewing it
The car→foot→roof→apartment→car transitions (~the entire shot). The sequence changes its mode of movement five times in 12 minutes. Each transition is an invisible cut masked by a sudden camera movement or a passage through an opening (door, window, door). This is where the 37 montages are hidden.
Hemsworth's exhaustion (~take 17+) Hargrave said it: the fatigue is real. By the 17th or 21st take of an uncut segment, Hemsworth isn't just acting exhaustion, he's living it. Look at his breathing, the sweat, the slight hesitations in his movements. It's the same physical authenticity as Theron in Atomic Blonde, but stretched to a 12-minute scale.
Hargrave on the hood (unseen). You won't see him in the final shot, but during the car chases, the director himself was strapped to the front of the vehicle, operating the camera while enduring the accelerations, braking, and turns. Behind-the-scenes footage is circulating on Instagram; it's mind-blowing.
Did you know that?
Sam Hargrave is the missing link in the evolution of the action sequence shot. He choreographed and operated the camera for the staircase sequence in David Leitch's Atomic Blonde (2017). He coordinated the stunts for Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame for the Russo brothers. It was Joe Russo who brought him the script for Extraction after learning he wanted to direct. The result: a debut film that surpasses the ambition of his mentors' long takes.
The lineage is direct: Children of Men (2006, Cuarón) → Atomic Blonde (2017, Leitch, Hargrave's choreography) → Extraction (2020, Hargrave as director). Three films, one single lineage. Children of Men invented the urban warfare tracking shot. Atomic Blonde transposed it to close-quarters combat in a building, with Hargrave behind the camera. Extraction extended it to 12 minutes outdoors, in the traffic of a real city, with Hargrave strapped to the hood of a car. And the circle closes: Extraction 2 (2023) pushed the concept to 14 minutes. Extraction 3 is filming in June 2026 in Australia, with Fraser Taggart (Mission: Impossible, Dead Reckoning) as director of photography. Hargrave continues to strap himself to the front of vehicles.
Pratt told Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 , "We do things 30, 40 times." Gunn replied, "That's Jackie Chan." Hargrave, on the other hand, learned from Jackie Chan through Brad Allan (the Jackie Chan Stunt Team → Kingsman). But where Chan rehearsed for the perfection of the movement, Hargrave rehearses for the exhaustion of the body. The philosophical difference is the same as that between Kingsman and Atomic Blonde: one seeks the beauty of violence, the other its physical truth. Extraction is on the side of truth.
Sources
Sam Hargrave - IndieWire, "How First-Time Director Sam Hargrave Pulled Off That Wild 12-Minute, One-Shot Action Sequence" (April 2020)
Sam Hargrave - Variety, "How Extraction's Sam Hargrave Used His Experience as a Stuntman on His Feature Directorial Debut" (May 2020)
Sam Hargrave - MovieMaker, "How Extraction Shot That 12-Minute Continuous Fight Scene" (January 2023)
Sam Hargrave, Joe Russo, Chris Hemsworth - IGN livestream (April 2020, summarized by Looper)
Looper - "The Untold Truth Of Extraction's 12-Minute 'One-Shot' Sequence" (May 2020)
World of Reel - "Extraction 3 to Shoot This Summer" (March 2026)
Flickering Myth – review (April 2020)
Through the Shattered Lens – review (November 2025)
Wikipedia - Extraction (2020 film)
Read also
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/deadpool-wolverine - Another arc of choreographed fights filmed in continuous shots, previous entry in the collection
Real vs. Fake Sequence Shots - The Complete Guide https://www.plan-sequences.com/blog-plan-sequences/vrais-vs-faux-plans-sequences-guide-complet - How 37 Separate Sequences Become 12 Minutes of Continuous Illusion
