Movie Reviews
‘Land of Bad’ Review: Russell Crowe Upstages a Pair of Hemsworth Brothers in Junky Actioner
There’s a particularly intense scene early on in the new war movie Land of Bad. A young soldier is faced with a difficult choice when it comes to breakfast: Fruit Loops or Frosted Flakes. He stares at the two boxes intently, turning them over to compare their nutritional content (or lack thereof). It’s practically a metaphor for the choices facing moviegoers at their local multiplex these days.
A prime example would be William Eubank’s action-thriller, which feels like a Michael Bay film if he faced budgetary restraints. But for all its familiar aspects, Land of Bad does have a few things going for it, namely the presence of not one but two Hemsworth brothers (sadly, though, Chris isn’t one of them) and Russell Crowe, who spends most of the movie sitting in a chair staring at a screen and manages to completely steal it anyway.
Land of Bad
The Bottom Line For when one Hemsworth just isn’t enough.
Release date: Friday, Feb. 16
Cast: Liam Hemsworth, Russell Crowe, Luke Hemsworth, Ricky Whittle, Milo Ventimiglia
Director: William Eubank
Screenwriters: David Frigerio, William Eubank
Rated R,
1 hour 50 minutes
The story begins with the relatively untrained Kinney (Liam Hemsworth) being recruited at the last minute to join a dangerous Delta Force mission in the Philippines to retrieve a CIA asset from the clutches of, you guessed it, Islamic terrorists. It isn’t long before he’s on a plane to the area, where he has to engage in a risky parachute maneuver along with fellow soldiers Sugar (Milo Ventimiglia, not given much to do but looking very macho doing it), Abel (Luke Hemsworth) and Bishop (Ricky Whittle).
The mission quickly goes awry, with Kinney left alone after the others go missing, presumed dead. Except he’s really not alone, thanks to the literally hovering presence of “Reaper” (Crowe), who’s manning the controls of deadly drones along with his associate Nia (Chika Ikogwe) at a military base in Las Vegas. The two men engage in audio communication throughout the mission, with Reaper assuring the young man, “I am your eyes in the sky and the bringer of doom.” Because that’s presumably how drone operators talk. And in case you’re wondering about Reaper’s apt nickname, be advised that his real last name is Grimm.
As Kinney desperately attempts to survive on his own and complete the mission, Reaper has to cope with such annoyances as an airman interrupting him during a tense moment to ask his order for a Starbucks run. Most of the men on the base are so preoccupied with a televised basketball game that they can’t be bothered to answer the phone, which is particularly problematic for Reaper because his wife is on the verge of giving birth.
As things get worse and worse for Kinney as depicted in a series of tense action sequences, Reaper is ordered to relinquish his desk, leaving him time to go grocery shopping. We’re thus treated to a lengthy scene in which he strolls through a supermarket and tries to find specialty foods requested by his vegan wife, with moments of him inquiring about an artisanal cheese juxtaposed against interludes of Kinney being brutally tortured.
As you’ve figured out by now, modern combat, and its depiction in cinema, is a long way off from the likes of Sands of Iwo Jima (can you imagine John Wayne playing a drone operator who’s also preoccupied with planning a wedding for his work associate, as Reaper is here?). Unlike such similarly themed war films as Eye in the Sky and Good Kill, Land of Bad isn’t particularly concerned with the ethical aspects of drone warfare; each perfectly timed explosion blasting bad guys to smithereens is guaranteed to elicit cheers from gung-ho audiences. But the film does slyly comment on the absurdity of the process, as when a struggling Kinney finally manages to make a phone call to the base, only to be hung up on by the man answering who’s too distracted by the ballgame.
Director Eubank (Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, Underwater) stages the combat scenes with impressive skill, even if they’re not galvanizing enough to erase anyone’s memories of, say, Black Hawk Down. And the youngest Hemsworth brother does a good job balancing his character’s action movie cred with a realistic vulnerability.
But it’s Crowe who’s the film’s MVP. Now that he no longer has to stay in shape to carry movies like Gladiator, the actor seems liberated, infusing performances such as this one and his turn in The Pope’s Exorcist with a delightfully offbeat comic sensibility indicating that his inner clown has finally broken out. Being a character actor rather than a star suits him well.
Full credits
Production: Volition Media Partners, Broken Open Pictures, R.U. Robot Studios, Short Porch Pictures
Distributor: The Avenue
Cast: Liam Hemsworth, Russell Crowe, Luke Hemsworth, Ricky Whittle, Milo Ventimiglia
Director: William Eubank
Screenwriters: David Frigerio, William Eubank
Producers: Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Arianne Fraser, Petr Jakl, Mark Fasano, David Frigerio, William Eubank, Michael Jefferson, Adam Beasley
Executive producers: Tracey Robertson, Nathan Mayfield, Tracey Vieira, Luke Hemsworth, Delphine Perrier, Vanessa Yao Guo, Jack Bear Liu, Jared Purrington, Sophie Jordan, Riccardo Magnoni, Martin J. Barab, Henry Winterstern, Coindy Bru, Ford Corbett, Joshua Harris, JJ Caruth, Wes Hull, Dave Lugo, Bennett Litwin, Ruthanne Frigerio, Kyle Smithson, John Stalberg, Jr.
Director of photography: Agustin Claramunt
Production designer: Nathan Blanco Fourax
Editor: Todd E. Miller
Costume designer: Phill Eagles
Composer: Brandon Roberts
Casting: Mary Vernieu, Michelle Wade Byrd
Rated R,
1 hour 50 minutes
Movie Reviews
1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy
by | May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 10:30 am EDT
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.
Dangerously Close
I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.
An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?
The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.
Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.
Fire with Fire
Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.
Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.
This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’
Last Resort
Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.
George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.
There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.
Short Circuit
Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?
NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.
Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.
His whole character is mystifying.
Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM
AFFECTION movie poster | ©2026 Brainstorm Media
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026
AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.
There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.
Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.
But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.
The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.
Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.
Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.
The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?
AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.
Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.
We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.
As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.
Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”
The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:
Deanna: ★★★★.5
Allison: ★★★.25
Julia: ★★
To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.
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