Land of Bad Parent Guide

Rookie officer Sgt. Kinney (Liam Hemsworth) has been recruited for a special operation to retrieve a hostage from a compound in the Philippine jungle. The small team is accompanied remotely by Reaper (Russell Crowe), who operates a military drone that acts as their eye in the sky and back up weapon system. But when the operation goes wrong, some members of the team are left in a 48-hour battle for survival, with no way of knowing what lies ahead, save what Reaper can see from the air.

We’ve all seen war movies. You know, the films middle aged dads like to put on while they doze off in front of the TV. And I’m not talking about thoughtful stories about the horrors of war and the effects it has on combatants and society as a whole. No, I’m talking about gory military propaganda flicks where Americans are always the good guys and everyone else is a bad guy, with no shades of grey.

That’s what Land of Bad is. It’s brutal, violent, and glorifies the actions of American soldiers, regardless of how many people they kill (or whether or not war crimes are involved). In fact, the script never gets around to explaining what the “bad guys” are doing, aside from the fact that they have one hostage. If this kind of kinetic shoot-‘em-up is your cup of tea, Land of Bad is one of the more stylish and well shot versions I’ve seen.

For most people, however, the extreme violence, lack of thoughtful messages, and oodles of machismo are going to be too much to make Land of Bad worth slogging through just to see a few well composed shots. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the message of this film is, aside from “American military good”. Hey, some people like that but I am just not one of them. I’m fully aware I’m not the intended audience for this movie, and that’s ok. If you are the target audience, you will be pleased to know that director William Eubank took the time to make a high-quality example of the genre. I just think that the intended audience is very small - and probably not reading this website.