Liam Hemsworth is a good actor, but he hasn’t had the breaks in Hollywood as his older brother, Chris Hemsworth. He has been part of the Hunger Games franchise, but most of his films have been mid – or subpar. Land of Bad is the latest movie he stars in, and it’s a little bit better than most of the other films he’s been a part of.

Sergeant JJ Kinney (Liam Hemsworth) code-named “Playboy” is a drone operator who gets recruited into an Army Special Forces team to go on a special operation with them. They need him to help them rescue some of their other members who were captured by the local insurgents of a terrorist country. When they get ambushed, he is their only hope, along with an Air Force Drone pilot Captain Eddie Grimm (Russell Crowe) code-named “Reaper”.

This film has a modern-day warfare aspect, but it also has an aspect that reminds one of classic Vietnam War films. The military elements of the story were some of the best I’ve seen in recent memory. I felt like there was a realistic survival aspect of the story. Genuine stakes and risks are going on in this film. There are many scenes of bloody beheadings, men being shot full of bullets and/or dripping all over them from wounds they received at the hands of gunmen. This was pretty raw and graphic to be as a viewer, watching it unfolding.

There were a few things that drew me to this story besides the war and military elements.  The first is the characters played by both Hemsworth and Crowe. They have redeeming character arcs that made me invest in what they were doing throughout the film. This guy who wasn’t supposed to be there gets thrown into this situation. he didn’t want to be in but makes a conscious decision to do his job anyway. That’s bravery at the highest level. 

Russell Crowe’s character also has a backstory, which is very interesting, and what he does is selfless as well. He had a career path problem, which made him a bit of a grumpy old man for lack of a better word. He has problems with his superiors, and that caused him issues with getting promoted.  Along with financial problems, which made him stay where he could make more money for his family. He is a very good man who I would be proud to be myself. I loved his arc in the movie.

The second thing is that there is a subplot involving college basketball and the NCAA basketball tournament. Two characters are Ohio St. I was a Buckeyes fan, and another is a Tennessee Vols fan. I was a basketball coach in my younger days, and Larry Bird was one of my idols growing up as a kid. That being said, this aspect of the film was a little bit out of place, but in the context of the story, it grounded these men in a world of reality.  I’m a huge college basketball fan. I love Syracuse basketball.  I used to do NCAA brackets myself for many years. It just felt slightly out of place in this story of a high-stakes game of survival.

Land of Bad had guys that felt realistic within the cats. Milo Ventimiglia and another one with tattoos of the name of the film. This showed me that the director, William Uebank, who also wrote the movie David Frigerio, tried to put things in the story that would make it come across the right way. I was completely immersed in the warfare aspects of the story. The characters and story felt authentic and I was invested in this movie from the very beginning.  

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen