William Eubank’s new film Land of Bad brings together the Hemsworth brothers on the set, not the most famous one, who plays Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Liam and Luke. Other performers include Russell Crowe and Milo Ventimiglia. In the review below, we explain why a decent cast does not save the day.
Pluses:
good technical performance; decent cast; a few tense scenes, Hooks in the headset was a delight (look at the main text)
Minuses:
unnecessary scenes and meaningless dialogues (the first half hour can be safely deleted without harming the narrative); too many absurd nonsense; lack of an expressive antagonist and a weak storyline of a guy with a headset and a soldier in the field, which does not catch at all; general banality and caricature of certain moments
Land of Bad
Genre action movie
Director William Eubank
Starring Liam Hemsworth, Luke Hemsworth, Russell Crowe, Milo Ventimiglia, Ricky Whittle
Premiere Vudu
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb
A team of four soldiers from the Delta unit travels to the Philippines to rescue a CIA operative who has been spying on a Russian arms dealer. However, during the surveillance of the latter, an unpredictable event occurs when a group of terrorists arrives and begins to chop off the heads of the audience with machetes, shouting «Allahu Akbar». Unable to tolerate such bloody arbitrariness, the Americans engage the enemy, whose forces are clearly superior.
From the air, the fighters are supported by an MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance and strike UAV, piloted from a military base in Las Vegas by the burly Captain Eddie Grimm and his assistant, Sergeant Nia Branson. But very soon the situation gets out of hand, and the rescuers become the ones who need to be rescued. Keeping in touch with Sergeant J.J. «Playboy» Kinney, Grimm tries to do his best to get the victims out of the meat grinder.
Looking at the title of this uncomplicated action movie, one might think that the movie is going to be about russia. But fortunately, here we have another military action movie about valiant American soldiers in trouble, like Behind Enemy Lines (2001) with Owen Wilson, Lone Survivor (2013) with Mark Wahlberg, and a whole bunch of similar films.
William Eubank, previously directed the very strange science fiction The Signal (2014) and the failed deep-sea horror Underwater (2020). Screenwriter David Frigerio once wrote a script called «Taste for Blood», which was bought by fyodor bondarchuk’s company Art Pictures Group and used as the basis for the film The Warrior. One can only imagine what kind of miserable trash the result was. So neither filmmaker has ever grabbed stars from the sky, and this project will definitely not be a breakthrough in their careers.
The problem is that the authors realize their quite noble attitudes, which could be converted into a painfully simple but good action movie, with absolutely primitive means.
Where there should have been intense battle scenes, the viewer is offered unimaginative shootouts with some clumsy, clip-art inserts in the slow-mo. Where there are hints of exciting drama in the style of Die Hard (when an unfamiliar field fighter and his radio/headset-wearing partner have a heartfelt, confessional interaction), there is a fair amount of indifference. Where Liam Hemsworth’s character would not have been left with a wet spot, the guy continues to run around the jungle and shoot at the bad guys.
The setting at a military base in Las Vegas deserves a special mention, where the only thing missing to complete the picture is strippers and good beer. Responsible for the work during the missions here are a pedantic captain played by Russell Crowe and his assistant, a copy of Hooks from Police Academy. All the others, including the local colonel, are complete degenerates who do nothing but watch basketball incessantly, ignoring incoming phone calls. And this cringe factor is the basis of the climax, when the level of tension, in theory, should be maximum, but instead there is surprise.
For dessert, we get an outstanding life hack on how to protect yourself from an explosion: it turns out that during rocket attacks, in the absence of adequate shelter, you can safely take water into the bathtub and dive in. It is also possible to be captured by the enemy twice in one day and literally get away with it. And there is no normal antagonist. And yet, and yet, and yet…
Liam Hemsworth seems to be continuing the role from The Expendables 2, but at 34 he plays a 27-year-old snot-nosed brat who is mocked by his older brothers. The eldest of the brothers, Luke, whose career, not unlike Chris’s, is in trouble, exists solely for the sake of his heroic death two minutes after the start of hostilities. It’s hard to see Russell Crowe as the man who once played Maximus in Ridley Scott’s historical epic, and that’s all that can be said about his role. The scenes in the supermarket with the actor’s participation, which are edited with scenes in the Philippine hell, are some kind of surrealism.
All of the above-mentioned questionable moments, of which there are many in the film space, spoil the overall impression of a technically quite normal action movie. Along with the best genre representatives, it does not stand up to any criticism, given how different the genre is today from what it was in the era of Schwarzenegger and Stallone. In fact, only fans of unpretentious action films from the distant past should pay attention to this movie.
And this sounds a bit strange given that the film’s authors are trying to emphasize how important the role of drones is in modern warfare. Well, every conscious Ukrainian is well aware of this, even without the mediocre American action movies.