When a U.S. Army special forces extraction mission goes wrong they are reliant on rookie Air Force Sergeant JJ Kinney (Liam Hemsworth) and drone operator Captain E. Grimm (Russell Crowe) to try and guide them home. 

Land of Bad is a peculiar film. Its highs are pretty high whilst its lows are very low. It is ultimately a B movie wrapped in high production standards and weird story decisions. 

The plot is wildly generic. Rookie soldier goes on a mission with veterans and finds himself fighting for survival. The war they are fighting is obscure and unknown. We know they are in the Philippines and there is some link to terrorism and that’s about it. The enemies are just stereotyped Asian militia whilst the American special forces “operators” are mythical brave super soldiers. There is some sort of vague allusion to modern drone warfare being more barbaric and heartless than hand to hand fighting which means something but it’s lost in the mix of action and explosions. And our middle aged drone operator, whose call sign is “Reaper” and real name is Grimm, is the sort of guy always in trouble with his seniors and is a bit of a mess. 

On the plus side though all of this is wrapped up in high production values and some solid acting performances. When the action sporadically kicks off it looks very good. Whilst Liam Hemsworth instills his rookie with a believable level of nervousness early on and Russell Crowe is incredibly watchable doing whatever it is he is doing. So let’s speak about Russell Crowe’s “Grim Reaper”…

Is it believable that a 60 year old, overweight man who wears a Hawaiian shirt and a golf glove on his trigger hand is a Captain piloting a drone on active missions? They attempt to explain this in amongst him being very nice to his co-pilot and very rude to everyone else working there. We see him reorganising coffee pods, complaining about his favourite college basketball team, doing his weekly shop at the local supermarket and explaining that he is on his 4th wife who any moment now is going to deliver his 9th child. Crowe seemingly can make anything watchable and these scenes on their own are bizarrely captivating but all they actually do is break up the flow of the action and elongate what could have been a snappy action film. Yet without Crowe doing this I am not sure I would have even considered watching the film let alone found it passably interesting! 

On the ground the team is made up of Kinney (Liam Hemsworth), Abell (Luke Hemsworth), Sugar (Milo Ventimiglia) and Bishop (Ricky Whittle). It is interesting to see acting brothers Liam and Luke Hemsworth together whilst Milo Ventimiglia is impressively convincing as probably the biggest “alpha bro” on the team. Nothing they do is as peculiar or interesting as Crowe’s coffee pod reorganisation but they seem like impossibly good shots and a good approximation of every other action movie glorification of grit and determination. Eventually they will be put on a ticking clock and race against time to complete their mission. 

So is it good? Not in any way that will make anyone remember its existence in a few months time. It is passable as a “turn your brain off” action flick. But its real curio value is in a Russell Crowe character that simultaneously derails and invigorates the film.