Iko Uwais directs and acts in the story of a band of elite soldiers who must rescue a group of researchers taken captive in the jungle

Can an elite team of soldiers rescue a band of innocent hostages from a bunch of mean old terrorists? Yes, probably, since there are few (if any) action movies in which the hostages are wiped out and the terrorists win. Not to be confused with the Extraction action franchise starring Chris Hemsworth as a mercenary named Tyler, nor with action thriller Escape Plan: The Extractors, starring Dave Bautista as a prison security expert named Trent, this is an Indonesian action thriller in which actor/director Iko Uwais plays a soldier named Timur. The film was actually called Timur originally, but there’s no denying that The Extractor is a more commercial title (unless you are particularly interested in the medieval Mongol khanates) and will attract more viewers to this tale of hostages, heroes and long-ago childhood friends.

In some ways, though, the rebrand is a shame, because the new title suggests the film is more generic than it is. While the basic plot, in which a bunch of researchers are taken hostage in the jungle by an armed group of wrong ’uns, is hardly unique, there are sequences in the film that stand out from the direct-to-video action content mill. In Indonesia, timur means “east”, where the sun rises, and it carries the connotation of hopefulness. That softer feeling in the original title is a key part of the film’s identity, which includes sentimental flashbacks to the childhoods of various characters whose lives have taken tragically different paths. (Can you imagine a world in which a terrorist and a soldier knew each other as children? The Extractor can.)

There’s a committed performance from a spunky Adria Arjona in the Guest director Adam Wingard’s decent B-movie but it’s missing some sharper weaponry

There’s something rather fascinating about an indie director who heads to the A-list before returning to their roots, a wider skillset and different perspective gained for better or worse. Working within a stricter system – the tiniest of choices being agreed upon by the largest of committees – can often be a creatively crushing experience that we’ve heard gruesomely detailed by many who survived it but the expansion of what one is allowed to technically do with a bigger budget can also be instructive and enriching. The dream scenario is bringing back the good and allowing the bad to inspire new work that makes the most of how unshackled one again now is.

There are plenty of examples of how this hasn’t worked. Neill Blomkamp following Elysium and Chappie with chintzy low-budget horror Demonic (easily his least effective film although since opening his own AI “studio” I imagine the worst is yet to come), Marc Forster following Quantum of Solace and World War Z with a blind Blake Lively film that, ironically, no one saw while Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck went from the greatness of Half Nelson to the blandness of Captain Marvel to the headache of Freaky Tales. But then we were also gifted with the hometown intimacy of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma after he came back from space for Gravity and Hogwarts for the Prisoner of Azkaban while Karyn Kusama brushed off the nightmare of Æon Flux with the brilliantly creepy dinner party thriller The Invitation.

Paul Greengrass drama The Uprising was supposed to be a historical epic about the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 – but a strange new campaign has inserted a surprising figure

Nobody likes to have the full plot of a movie spoiled before they’ve even seen it. However, sometimes this can be taken to the extreme. Take the new Paul Greengrass movie, The Uprising, for example. It is two weeks away from its US release and not only does nobody know the plot, but nobody seems to know what it is even about. Seriously, nobody at all. The film’s distributors just spent yesterday squabbling in public about whether Robin Hood was in it or not.

Here’s what we know so far. Initially, all the trailers and promotional materials made The Uprising look like a film about the Peasants’ Revolt that tore through England in 1381. And this was very exciting, since the revolt was a thrilling moment in history that has been bizarrely underserved by Hollywood over the years. Most exciting of all, though, it sounded like it fit exactly into Greengrass’s wheelhouse: full of action and realism and political awareness.