R | 1h 53m | War, Action, Drama | March 19, 2024
“Land of Bad” was released on Feb. 16 and immediately got drop-kicked by the critic community. I decided to wait for the audience response, with intent to review for the streaming release on March 19. Results? Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94 percent. Yup—that’s my kinda movie.
Trial by Fire
Air Force Sgt. JJ Kinney (Liam Hemsworth) is a JTAC. “JTAC” stands for Joint Terminal Attack Controller; they’re the Air Force specialists who accompany other tier-one spec-ops teams on missions, sometimes humorously derided by team members for being good for one thing only: “bringing the rain,” that is, calling in drone strikes and air support.
Kinney, who missed his flight back home due to a stomach bug, has been ordered by Delta Force Master Sgt. John “Sugar” Sweet (Milo Ventimiglia)—because Kinney’s the only JTAC available—to accompany Sugar and his two teammates, Abell (Luke Hemsworth) and Bishop (Ricky Whittle), on an operation.
This will be a highly dangerous rescue-op in the jungles of a South Asian country, full of “violent extremist groups” (read, jihadists), near the Sulu Sea, in the Philippines. Their mission is to rescue an undercover asset. Kinney will liaison with the team’s assigned “eye in the sky”—a Reaper drone team consisting of Air Force Capt. Eddie “Reaper” Grimm (Russell Crowe) and Staff Sgt. Nia Branson (Chika Ikogwe).
Kinney, a combat greenhorn, has only one prior op. He’s so nervous he can’t choose between Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops and when he forgets to pack both boxes, the veteran operators nickname him “Fruit Loops” (military nicknames are rarely cool; they usually sum up an operator’s most glaring faux-pas, which serves as a humility reminder).
Drone Team
Eddie “Reaper” Grimm has very defined ways he likes things organized, getting immediately irate after discovering that his superbly organized coffee pods have been recklessly rearranged. That’s probably a good quality for a drone operator to have. He’s also got issues with authority—not hiding his disdain for Col. Duz Packett (Daniel MacPherson). And it would appear that he’s glued his captain’s bars on a Hawaiian shirt.
Reaper’s also upset that his hometown Ohio State Buckeyes just lost the March Madness NCAA hoops tournament, and his wife’s about to give birth. Both of these issues create a serious problem: He needs someone to answer the base phone in the rec room, pronto, should his wife call in while he’s on drone duty; and Col. Packett and a big bro-fest of young airmen are whooping it up loudly to a televised basketball game. They also repeatedly ignore Reaper’s requests, and keep leaving the phone off the hook. Reaper’s already got a bad case of high blood pressure. Talk about high stakes.
Back in the Jungle
As the team stalks though the jungle, Kinney’s wondering aloud how a neophyte like himself ended up on a tier-one team. Which leads to a debate with Bishop: Kinney thinks his tech-oriented job serves to take the barbaric nature out of warfare and gets a lecture from Bishop about how war is barbaric by definition, and all it takes is one crazy, up-close-and-personal combat experience for a man to have that reality seared into his brain forever.
Speaking of which, when the team finally arrives at the location where the asset is thought to be imprisoned, they encounter the Abu Sayyaf, a ruthlessly evil band of Islamic terrorist-pirates that the United States, in this Sulu jungle war, is intent on expunging. Through their binoculars they witness some gruesome things, involving a very jihadist-looking scimitar/machete-looking implement of destruction, and a woman.
When it’s apparent that the woman’s child will meet the same fate as his mother, Delta decides they’ve seen enough, metaphorically don their Grim Reaper cloaks, and rain down hellfire in various forms, most aptly “Reaper” Grimm’s MQ-9 Reaper Drone’s AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.
Kinney eventually finds himself on his own, trying to navigate to an exfiltration-point while many AK-47-toting guerillas seek to locate him. Director William Eubank stages his combat mayhem suspensefully, and Liam Hemsworth shows us the gradual transition of a rookie airman from terror-filled beginner to resolutely determined, confidant, cool-headed combat-initiated warrior. We watch him discover that survival depends on a combination of brutality, luck, and especially perseverance.
Russell Crowe
A fair amount of “Land of Bad” involves Grimm chatting via headset with Kinney, with whom he bonds with over the fact that they’re both Ohioans. Grimm, who’s constantly mouthing off, and who’s always got steam coming out of his ears for one reason or another, is highly entertaining. One appreciates Crowe’s ability to hold our focus, especially since his role is emoted mostly while sitting in a chair. And it’s not even his own chair, much to Reaper’s bird-flipping annoyance.Especially enjoyable is the climatic scene where “Reaper” Grimm gets to destroy military property with a golf club, right in his superior officer’s face, due to having the uncontestable moral high ground. There’s also a sweet closing dance number with his drone partner, who’s just asked him to walk her down the aisle at her upcoming wedding.
But while Crowe’s Grimm is the main attraction—it’s Kinney’s character arc that lingers in one’s memory. Kinney finally experiences Bishop’s early definition of war—a barbaric, up-close-and-personal combat experience that’s seared into his brain forever. It’s a fine depiction of the tempering of the inner warrior sword.
The other outstanding cinematic rendering of that transformation that comes to mind is from the 2006 spelunking horror film “The Descent.” The film’s main female protagonist has finally had enough of being horrified by the ghastly subterranean humanoids and wreaks supreme hammer-of-Thor mayhem upon their pale ilk, compliments of an ice-climbing axe.
But ultimately, “Land of Bad” demonstrates handily, that no matter who he plays, or how much weight he’s gained, Oscar-winner Crowe, with his gravelly, Richard Burton-esque basso profundo, is a scene-stealing heavyweight (no pun intended) movie star.
