Land of Bad (2024)
No Man Left Behind.
Sometimes you just can’t substitute some nice military action when it comes to movies. Likewise, sometimes the names aren’t always the best - a lot of them go that tati-cool route and like to choose a military term to use. Now, although there’s always a spot in my heart for one-liner ridden machismo-fest olden classic action movies, when you want a dawdle of tension, you go military style. Tonight’s movie starts like every movie of the type - but very quickly our operators will find themselves in the Land of Bad.
A three piece special forces unit gets deployed with a very not-special forces air tech member when he happens to just be the guy available. It’s a pretty easy mission, go in and find their target, maybe even rescue a missing asset, then get out. New guy is their main link to the drone team back home - which although the eye-to-eye ground thumping special ops team puts more stock in their weapons on hand, nobody is going to complain about some tactical sky-high surveillance and fire support. After nestling in to some nice spots and getting eyes on the target though, things spiral very quickly out of control as it looks more like the place belongs to a bloody terrorist and things start exploding and shooting all over. It’s up to the drone team to try and keep the lone operator safe as his more veteran team all finds themselves on the wrong ends of enemy weaponry.
The actors get to do a lot with this. Yes, some aren’t in it as much - our air member and the duo of drone operators get to have a bunch more screen time than most the enemies and spec ops team for example. Still, with what time they all have they do a great job. You won’t like everyone - including the folks on team good - so it’s not like it’s entirely a single-sided venture either. There’s some good deliveries, there’s some nice chemistry, and the mains all do a good job of feeling like people without being too paint by numbers. The main cast can feel a bit over-acted at times, but i think it’s less because the actor is missing the mark and more because that’s what the script is calling for. Sometimes it works better, and sometimes it might feel slightly screen chewy - but it never really feels unlike the normal you’d expect from a movie about a group of military folks poking fun at each other or being run through the situations.
Characters probably fair a little worse then the actors playing them. You might think that means I’m about to launch into how they aren’t good, which isn’t entirely the case. Some of them are a bit one-tone yes, like our paint-by-numbers extreme terrorist of a villain. Sometimes that stereotypical macho can pull through a bit - which most of the time to me just makes for lively relational banter between how normal dudes act, let alone soldiers out on a mission. Some characters only get a few moments to really show off who they are, like our second main drone operator who really only feels like she gets one decent moment outside of side character territory. Others - like the team of idiots too busy watching basketball to do their job on the good guy side - pretty much exist solely to ground you in the rage-filled realism of people you’ve probably worked with before in a place that wasn’t life or death. The folks who interplay with each other have a good chemistry, and our two main characters get to have a bunch of little background drops to help fill out there characters both as people and in the sense of what makes them them.
Home crew represent
The action is of course what will draw most people to the movie if I had to guess - that or the fact it’s got half the Hemsworth brothers in it. That said, the amount of tension the movie manages to rack up, especially towards the end, is an appreciated effort and a good number of folks will absolutely be on the edge of their seats anxiously awaiting how it’s going to play out. It also has the less action-heavy moments, in part thanks to swapping to the home team drone operators outside of combat and also some of the more travel related soldier moments. When the action does kick off though, it is every bit as bombastic and brutal as you’d want it to be. It’s not too overly graphic in the sense that it’s no zombie movie with guts hanging out, but it does have some brutal stuff in there like decapitations and head shots. Plenty of squibs, or probably wonderful digital replacements for them, really sell some of the injurious impacts, and some nice wire pulls are added in to amp up some of the larger rifle hits to really add that extra oomph in “taking someone off their feet.” Explosions too are just absolutely galore in this movie, and most walked out on the screen with some level of slow motion to really let your eyes just soak in the absolute glory of all the smoke, fire, sparks, and flipping objects when they go off. Action fan? No way you should walk away disappointed with this one.
Costume work is done well also - albeit yes it’s that modern setting so it’s all very much easy to just forget someone had to choose stuff for each person to make their outfit. Still, plenty of options, and it’s pretty easy to track whose good and bad at a quick glance. Settings pretty decent as well - one part made a few of us watching think back to some of the Ghost Recon games really - with a lot of juingle and a bit of tunnel. The swapping between back home operators in their little operation room or at one point someone at a supermarket with the jungles and tunnels and chaos works pretty well to break it up visually as well. I’m sure if you watched it back with an eagle eye a couple of times you might find some stuff that doesn’t hold up quite as well as other bits, but at a first watch and just having fun it all feels pretty solid. Props are pretty good looking as well, so no complaints about this department from me.
Audio is also well done. Background music is there doing it’s thing, but funnily enough the music i remember the most is the heavy music it’s playing in the back of the chopper as the crew goes towards the HALO jump. Balance is great, no real worries hearing lines even if they are doing some whispering. Subtitles were also pretty solid, with at least one description of lines being delivered in a more panicky fashion that got a chuckle. For the thoughtful folks, or the ones that aren’t as thoughtful but to pull things apart, you can find a bunch. At surface level, war movies always have the war is bad message going on, even if it’s slightly more nuanced most the time. This one, dealing with drones and all, also brings in that “is it more humane or worse to remove the human element and making it feel less intimate?” You also get the commentary on people sucking with the idiot brigade and their basketball watching nonsense. Most likely, there’s more than that out there as well - like how you could say that perhaps if someone says you should worry about more bombs you should in fact worry about more bombs - but I think we’ve dropped enough obvious stuff here to satisfy most of us yes?
There goes the boom.
This was a good one. It has some solid tension that even managed to get me leaning forward in my seat - a bit of an accomplishment considering how disconnected to movies I’ve become over the years of watching so many. Of course, that’s not to say it’s the most thrill filled thriller to exist or anything like that, just an observation over a good movie pulling you in like it wants to even if you already assume to know how it’s going to end. There’s plenty of action, the main characters are likeable enough that you want to see what’s going to happen and start worrying when the supposed escape is still well before the end of the movie, and it all looks great on the screen. The camera work, shot comp, all of that stuff is well handled - even if it’s stuff that the common movie watcher probably doesn’t care as much about as a critic would - and it all adds up to quite a thrill ride. Heck, the worst part of the movie might just be the title drop and the fact that I feel like I’m messing up every time I don’t put a the between of and bad. Check it out, it’s a good use of time especially if you like military action thrillers!