Land of Bad

Directed by William Eubank, Land of Bad follows a team of special-forces soldiers, including Liam Hemsworth’s Kinney and Milo Ventimiglia’s Sweet, as they’re forced to rely on the help of an idiosyncratic drone pilot (Russell Crowe’s Reaper) after their mission goes awry. It’s a familiar premise that’s employed to somewhat erratic yet mostly satisfying effect by Eubank, as the filmmaker, armed with his and David Frigerio’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced actioner that admittedly does take a little while to become as wholeheartedly engaging as one might’ve hoped – with the movie, even in its less-than-spellbinding stretches, benefiting substantially from the stellar performances of its testosterone-forward cast. (Hemsworth and especially Ventimiglia are quite commanding here, though it’s Crowe’s magnetic, off-kilter turn that remains an ongoing highlight within the proceedings.) It’s clear, then, that Land of Bad, buoyed by a number of captivating sequences (eg Kinney must avoid detection by a villain and his persistent dog), improves steadily as it marches towards an impressively compelling and often electrifying final third, which cements the picture’s place as an engaging throwback that does, ultimately, suffer from a slight case of overlength.

*** out of ****