“Playboy” Kinney calls fire from the sky.
He’s part of the Air Force’s Tactical Air Control Party, and it’s his job to coordinate between ground forces (whom he works closely with) and drone pilots (who control those drones, via a glorified joystick, from thousands of miles away).
Kinney punches in coordinates, communicates with the drone pilot and voila! The drone delivers death—firing missiles into the heart of unfriendly territory.
Kinney likes his work. And as he’s tromping through the jungles near the Sulu Sea, he says as much to one of the Army Delta soldiers he’s with. His work, he says, helps take some of the mess out of war. It makes it a bit more clinical. A bit more efficient. A bit … cleaner.
Bishop, the longtime Delta vet, smirks. He’s seen enough to know better.
“War is barbaric,” he says. “That ain’t ever gonna change.”
If Kinney needed something to convince him, he’s about to get it.
The mission of this four-man team is deceptively simple: Sweep down on the Philippines-area compound of a former KGB agent and rescue a CIA operative that the U.S. believes is inside. Then, hustle back to the extraction point as quickly as possible.
Bishop and the rest don’t expect the mission to be easy. But with Kinney’s help (and the support of the drone hovering overhead) everyone should get out alive.
But when the team arrives, it discovers the compound already has company: members of an Islamic terrorist group led by the ruthless Saeed Hashimi. The Americans watch outside in horror as Saeed and his men start shooting—and, when the smoke clears, beheading—the compound’s residents.
Hashimi’s men select a boy, perhaps 10 years old, to be the next one to lose a head. The Delta team, led by a grizzled vet called Sugar, isn’t going to let that happen. The Americans may be outnumbered, but they’re not about to let a kid be killed while they look on. So—ahead of schedule—they start the assault.
Drones are great. They can be incredibly helpful, as Kinney will learn over the next couple of days. But this is war, however small it may look from the air. And war, as Bishop says, is barbaric.
War and military action can indeed be barbaric, and horrifically so. But it can also set the stage for heroism, too.
We see that in Land of the Bad, where Kinney, Sugar, Bishop and Abel (the fourth man in the group) do their best to protect each other—risking their own lives to safeguard their teammates.
But here we must introduce a fifth member of this rescue operation—drone pilot Eddie “Reaper” Grimm. Stationed in Las Vegas (nearly 8,000 miles away from the Sulu Sea), Reaper operates closely with Kinney to lock in on targets and handle threats. The drone also allows Reaper to see the environment around Kinney and his fellows—keeping them relatively well-informed on the enemy’s movements.
But when the mission goes south (and you just knew it was going to go south), the captain is instrumental not only in keeping Kinney safe from marauding bad guys, but in keeping the inexperienced Kinney calm. Even though Reaper is an ocean away, he’s a logistical and emotional anchor for Kinney, and he works plenty of overtime to help ensure the airman’s safety.
The terrorist group that attacks the compound is called Abu Sayyaf, a southeast Asian wing of the Islamic State. Saeed Hashimi mentions the name of Allah once. When Reaper’s partner, Nia, talks about her upcoming marriage, Reaper says it’s a “sacred” rite that, hopefully, will be done just once.
Ironically, Reaper says that he’s been married four times (including his current wife) and has eight kids (with another one on the way).
Men are sometimes seen shirtless. Hashimi seems to flirt with a woman at the compound: Seeing the interaction from some distance away through binoculars, Bishop jokes that she’s dealing with a definite “stranger danger” vibe.
Hashimi, it turns out, is not interested in sexual favors from the woman: Moments later, he orders his men to open fire, killing several people within the compound. The woman—the wife or girlfriend of the compound’s owner—survives the gun battle, but she’s forced to kneel before her husband/boyfriend as Hashimi takes out a huge knife and chops off the woman’s head. (The headless body falls sideways, blood spurting from the stump.)
It’s the first really disturbing scene in a movie filled with them. We won’t be able to individually deal with every moment of violence we see here, but certain scenes require a little more explanation.
A man is stabbed through the chest with, again, a large blade; when the subject begins to laugh, he’s beaten to death with a rock. A severely injured man is executed via a bullet to the head. Another man is captured and tortured: At first, his head is repeatedly forced underwater. Then—after the torturer Hashimi delicately plays with other instruments of torture (including a huge, gore-covered end cutter and a large meat cleaver)—the terrorist picks up a hammer and smashes it across his victim’s face. (Blood sprays out of the man’s mouth, and a tooth is left on the table in front of him.)
Someone is repeatedly stabbed in the face (off camera) with a broken plate. Dozens of people die from bloody gunshot wounds and explosions. Pickup trucks fly into the air from well-placed missile attacks. Combatants stagger around, covered in blood. Kinney may lose the tip of a finger. Someone tumbles off the side of a mountain. Another someone is knocked through a window by a table and summarily executed. A couple of individuals have their throats cut.
People get into more physical melees as well, involving flying fists and feet. Someone is repeatedly kicked in the gut and head while lying helpless on the ground. Abel talks about how an old injury still bothers him. We see plenty of property damage, as well.
More than 120 f-words (a few paired with the word “mother”) and around 35 s-words. We hear plenty of other profanities as well, including “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “d–k.”
God’s name is misused about seven times, most with the word “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused thrice. A couple of fingers are flipped.
Terrorists smoke.
We hear some pretty crude jokes in the lead-up to the mission. Reaper mentions that he’s gotten in trouble for being insubordinate before, and he comes pretty close to getting in trouble for it again here. Reaper says that his wife has been having some issues with gas in her late stages of pregnancy.
Land of the Bad does not turn away from blood, violence or the horrors of battle. It does not plug its ears to a tidal wave of profanity. It is not great cinema, but it also doesn’t pretend to be. It is, simply, a take-no-prisoners war movie.
The one twist this film comes with is in its interplay between Kinney, Reaper and the drone that ties them together.
Through the film, we can see how modern technology is infiltrating the battle zone. It illustrates what it can do really well—and what it can’t.
In the end, Bishop’s right. No technology will strip war of its barbarism and blood.
This movie reminds us of that barbarism—and shows us its blood—to an almost sadistic level. Sometimes it can feel more like butchery than battle. And while Land of the Bad may realistically depict the horrors of war, perhaps in this case those horrors should be left on the field—not brought into the theater.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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