Land of Bad is the latest in a long line of Hemsworth action flicks to star one of the infamous 3 brothers. Following 2023’s Extraction 2, Land of Bad stars Liam Hemsworth, with some help from his brother Luke, and Russell Crowe in a U.S. Covert Military mission gone wrong.
There’s no denying how good the Hemsworth’s are for the action genre. They ooze the sort of charisma and physical talent to be able to pull off such demanding roles with ease. Land of Bad is no different. Luke Hemsworth plays Kinney, a tech operative in a covert group sent to extract a target in secret. When the plan goes awry, he needs help from Captain Grimm (Crowe), a U.S. Air Force drone pilot, to get him out safely.
I was pretty impressed by how engaging the first two thirds of the film are. The characters are likeable, and director William Eubank does a good job showing the human side of soldiers. They act like regular people, except their job is life or death. It loses me though in the final third. There’s just some really unnecessary plot points that really soil what was, at the very least, an entertaining action flick.
There’s also just too many ideas riddling Land of Bad. The plot changes more times than a woman’s outfit before date night. From covert op mission focused on stealth to solo survival and extraction story to all out infiltration and beat em up action, there’s just too much going on with Land of Bad, and the runtime suffers because of it.
Final Thoughts
Look, Land of Bad isn’t bad. It’s not great either. Inevitably it will end up in the ether of forgettable action movies that you notice when looking at an actor’s filmography and say “huh, they were in that?”. Had they stuck to one idea and really nailed the landing, we might have had something. But alas, all we have is Land of Bad.
2/5
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