Opinion: Everything the Netflix film ‘Extraction’ gets wrong about Bangladesh

Review by web4beast

Sam Hargrave’s action thriller, starring Chris Hemsworth, reaffirms stale stereotypes about the country for Indian and Western viewers

Translated from Bangla by the Alal O Dulal blog.

The Butterfly Effect (2004) has one line of dialogue about Bangladeshi farmers – to show it as an agricultural country. In Zoolander (2001), Bangladesh was introduced as a country of child labour. Guess in what context? That’s right, our national pride – the garment industry. In the blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron (2016

scene of Chittagong’s shipbreaking industry was used without the name of Bangladesh. Finally, in Hollywood’s endless search for strange, dangerous, impossible locations, the cinema of Extraction crashed onto Bangladesh in 2020.

Extraction has broken all of Netflix’s records, and is distraction and destruction for the middle-class youth of South Asia confined by Covid-19. How much longer can we stay in crisis mode? This movie succeeds in diverting the attention of many for some time. The main villain of this movie is Bangladeshi, and Bangladesh is present under its own name – a mafia kingdom with child soldiers. Although it is temporary fun for the eyes, many Bangladeshis (the “natives”) have expressed their fury on social media.