Mikes Film Talk

Land of Bad feels like Call of Duty without a controller. An all too familiar take on international terrorists and a crack team stumbling onto them. Ho hum. The only thing that comes close to saving it is the acting of Hemsworth and Crowe.

But before moving forward to the story, let’s look at this title.

“Land of Bad.” The last time I checked, writers who contributed to film titles were a tad more articulate. Land of Bad??

Seriously??

The story

An elite team are called to do a Halo jump. They have to go into the worst section of the Philippines to catch an arms dealer.

The team arrive. They are outnumbered, outgunned and outwitted at almost every turn. An international terrorist pulls a switch hit and things go all Pete Tong very quickly.

Behind the camera

Writer/Director William Eubank, along with co-writer David Frigerio give us a video game movie here. Elite Army soldiers (Hooah!) along with one Air Force sergeant go on a deadly mission. Sounds like the Call of Duty handbook scenario 3.

There is nothing original here at all. The seasoned veterans making fun of the Air Force rookie (Liam Hemsworth) and the mission going all to heck.

“By the numbers” writing and directing.

Yet.

The audiences love it.

Go figure. Rotten Tomatoes dot com hammered it. While audiences on the same site gave it a staggering 94%. I am tempted to watch it again to see what I missed. Although I never allow myself the chance to nod off during the same film twice.

It does sort of work

The action is admirable and moves quickly. This can really be the only reason that the audiences have scored this so high.

Land of Bad moves at a cracking pace. Even trotting back and forth from Reaper and the team does not slow things down. In the story, Sgt Kinney heads out alone to save the day.

Meanwhile back at the script, everything moves quickly enough in the field to fill in some time.

*Kudos: Russell Crowe as the drone operator once again offers us something special.*

The Cast

Two Hemsworth brothers for the price of one:

Liam and Luke Hemsworth.

Russell Crowe as an overweight, OCD and geriatric drone operator. *Sorry, we are not trying to be cruel here but the man is 60. I am pretty sure no one in any military in the world is allowed to still serve at that age. Crowe may not look 60, but he looks close enough.

Milo Ventimiglia is the Lieutenant who is a dedicated hard a**. Milo has the distinction of being the only “Yank” in an “American” movie.

The rest of the cast are, as alluded to above, English or Australian. They all do their roles proud but are not easily recognisable.

The Verdict

The Land of Bad gives us far too little to work with. Two dimensional plot, cardboard cutout characters, “woke” intrusion and plot holes one can land a Huey helicopter into, leaves us wanting here. It feels like so many other “war” movies that rely on Call of Duty type scenarios.

I give this a grudging 3 stars. It earns two because I like the main actors. Each did what they could with a run of the mill plot and characters. This is streaming on Netflix and can be rented/purchased on Prime.

the trailer