Seann’s movie for this week is Land of Bad (2024), a movie he had never heard of, and upon first impressions, does not look to be more than a mediocre action flick. The movie has a 6.1/10 on IMDB, out of nearly 60,000 total reviews. Seann is someone who can enjoy a good wartime action flick, like Jarhead (2005) and Black Hawk Down (2001). However, this one does not seem on par with others.

Land of Bad, directed by William Eubank, starring Liam Hemsworth, Russell Crowe, and Luke Hemsworth, is a 2024 military action movie about a group of Delta Force Officers who are air dropped into Southeast Asia to rescue a CIA agent that has been kidnapped by an arms dealer. Within the first 30 seconds of the movie, there is already blatant product placement (something I personally despise in all forms of media) where the camera is showing a way too long close up of a box of Froot Loops vs Frosted Flakes, as the main character, Sgt. Kinney AKA “Froot Loop” AKA “Playboy,” played by Liam Hemsworth is deciding which box of single serve cereal he will bring with him on this mission. In the end, he decides on the Froot Loops, as one of the other squad members mentions that they’re his daughter’s favorite. 

The rest of the opening montage is filled with cringey masculine military dialogue, shit-talking, and all around feels rather pointless. It’s as if the writers watched every other popular Pro-Military American Hollywoodified action movie made prior to this and copy-pasted the worst lines of dialogue out of every one. In addition to this, the overall dialogue in this film leaves much groaning to the viewer. Cliche lines such as “It’s time to turn this carriage into a pumpkin,” “I am the bringer of doom,” seem ham-fisted and unnatural. 

Getting into the meat of the film, the operators are dropped in via a HALO drop to their mission. Kinney, has never done a HALO drop before, and one of the other operators says the line “You’ll be fine, it’s just like airborne, only way fuckin’ higher.” which is just not true and already setting the tone for an unbelievably inaccurate military film. Not only are they sending four guys into enemy territory on a “covert mission,” they are also sending an entirely unqualified drone operator along with them (Kinney.) This is just the beginning of an action-thriller ride that will take you to unimaginable places. 

The operators drop into the target zone, and thus starts a series of beyond-over-the-top-ridiculous-action sequences. They take a rather leisurely stroll through the woods to their target, the compound of the arms dealer, Petrov. The dialogue throughout this part is filled with some of the cringiest lines of dialogue this movie has yet to offer, including the worst one, where one of the fellow ops literally has “Land of Bad” tattooed on his forearms (see attached photo at the bottom.) As they are surrounding the compound and taking in the scene, they witness a middle eastern terrorist, Hashimi, driving on to the compound, to purchase weapons from Petrov. This leads in to the only surprising, and interesting piece of the movie; Hashimi and his men attack Petrov, and behead Petrov’s wife. As the ops are watching this scene from the rocks and forest around the compound, they see that Hashimi is about to behead Petrov’s young son right in front of him. This is when the ops begin their attack, saving the boy’s life (supposedly, as he is not seen or mentioned for the rest of the film.) 

After an all too long and ridiculous action sequence featuring drones hailing bombs onto the compound, the bad guys shooting multiple RPGs at the good guys. This sets up an already over-the-top film in terms of set up and dialogue into an entirely unbelievable action film that I find myself rolling my eyes at and groaning at constantly from here on out. At the end of this dragged out action sequence, we find Froot Loop AKA Kinney as the last survivor. The movie has now gone from a military squad action film to a lone-survivor film, with the aforementioned drone operator, Reaper, as his eyes in the sky. Somehow, this change of pace occurs after what feels like way too long, but also feels extremely abrupt and honestly throws off what little enjoyment of the movie I had up to this point. 

The main character’s plot armor in this movie is entirely nonsensical. There is a  scene where he is hiding half under a rock in water, and one of the bad guy’s dogs is barking at him, and the bad guy just beckons the dog away and drives off without investigating. This may have been one of the worst and least thought out ways he survives up to this point in the movie.
After a grueling, and albeit, uninteresting journey to the dropzone for the rescue helicopter, Kinney and the helicopter are ambushed by an entire fleet of bad guys, again with mounted machine guns in the backs of trucks, RPGs, and all sorts of other weaponry. Another issue I had with this film, as a non-military personal viewer, is the lack of consistency in the helicopters, drones, and airplanes and how they function/are shown. In this scene in particular, they show a Huey Chopper as well as a Black Hawk, depending on if it’s a far away scene or a close up. And there’s only one helicopter being used in this scene for the rescue. Of course, this rescue job is a failure, the helicopter has to flee or risk being blown up by an RPG (which we all know won’t happen because the bad guys can’t hit a brick wall in this movie unless they need to for the story to move forward.) So we are back where we started 20 minutes ago, with Kinney having to go further into the forested mountains to the next available drop zone. 

The most interesting thing that happens during this next sequence is Kinney slips and falls down a hill, into the river below him, right as there are more bad guys encroaching on his path. He is of course finally captured, only to, in the blink of an eye, punch a guy, steal a gun, and shoot and kill three or four bad guys that are surrounding him. Inside one of the houses where he was being held, we find Bishop, one of his operatives from the beginning of the movie still alive, and seemingly not too hurt either. In the sequence at the compound, Bishop and one of the other operatives (whose name I cannot recall nor care to,) were hit by an RPG while on a rocky ridge, and we see the entire ridge blow up and their bodies fall down it. But somehow, Bishop survived unscathed. They go from here to some underground caves where they believe others are being held to try and rescue them, and Kinney calls in air support for bombs to be dropped every fifteen minutes, starting with warning bombs, and leading to the final bombs destroying the entire complex they are in. Of course, Kinney’s comms run out of battery as the final order is being given to those back home manning the drones. So now they are on a rescue mission that may potentially be a suicide mission (but we know this won’t be the case due to the obscene plot armor in this movie.) 

They of course make their way through said caves, find a survivor or two, but are also captured themselves and end up locked in the caves as the first warning bombs are dropped on them. Hashimi then murders one of the survivors for seemingly no reason, and drags out Kinney for questioning. Kinney is trying to warn him of the incoming bombs, but Hashimi won’t have it. They beat him in the face with a hammer, and waterboard him, eventually dunking his entire body under water. During this scene is when the second round of bombs come, and we see a huge inferno coming down the hallway. Kinney’s plot armor to the rescue yet again, while submerged in a metal tank of water as the bomb’s inferno blasts through the cave system, the terrorists are brutally burned alive, and Kinney emerges from the water entirely unharmed once again. 

As Kinney is making his way out of the cave system with one of the other survivors (who also somehow managed to survive while locked in a metal cage,) Reaper has been relieved from duty, and is at the grocery store. This scene drags on as he is shopping for his pregnant and vegan wife. Kinney manages to find a satellite phone, and calls Reaper’s personal cell to call off the final attack, since the guys at base are busy watching March Madness and ignoring their duties (one of the things I disliked most about this movie, the colonel is watching with them while they are supposed to be helping live agents in enemy territory, and it’s unbelievably negligent. Every member in that room would be court marshalled for their actions five times over.)

Somehow, Reaper leaves the grocery store, and drives back to base and the control center and calls off the final round of bombing with mere seconds to spare. This was probably the least believable scene in an already unbelievable movie, he makes it back from the grocery store in under three minutes. Again, I’m not a military personal, nor have I ever been, but I think it would take more than three minutes to drive across town, verify your ID to get onto the base, and make your way into the control center.
All in all, this movie was not even enjoyable as a “shut your brain off for a fun action flick” as everything from the dialogue at the start is over-the-top cringe, the action sequences are laughably ridiculous, and the characters in this movie are some of the worst and negligible military personal I have ever seen on screen. I found myself checking how much of the film was left numerous times while watching, and groaning every time there was still over an hour left, over thirty minutes left, etc. I give this the rating I did only because Russell Crowe’s character of Reaper was kind of funny, and endearing.

1.5 mallards/5

-Seann

Let’s get this out of the way before going further – it is no secret that this is a much-maligned film. Holmes & Watson (2018) has abysmal scores across the board. Boasting a rating of 3.9 out of 10 (over 42,000 reviews) on IMDB, a “popcornmeter” score of 26% (over 2,500 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes, and a truly impressive 1.6 out of 5 on Letterboxd, this movie seems almost universally disliked. Being aware of this going in, and having never seen it before, I sought to answer the question: is it as bad as everyone says, and if so, why? 

The answer to the first question was a resounding “yes” upon my initial viewing. I had hopes of writing this review and arguing in favor of this film’s quality, if only to be a contrarian. I discovered that it is beyond defense – there truly are so few redeeming qualities in this movie that removing the “good” parts (and there are some) would not affect the overall quality in the slightest. In fact, an argument could be made that the positive aspects of the film are only positive due to their proximity to so much awfulness. The first question being answered, I sought to describe why exactly this picture failed in almost every regard. 

I think the largest issue this movie has is the complete lack of chemistry between Will Ferrell (Holmes) and John C Reilly (Watson). This was shocking to me, as other collaborations between the two have been very successful – Talladega Nights (2006) being the first that jumps to mind, with Step-Brothers (2008) right behind it. The scenes in which both characters appear on screen (the majority of the scenes in the film, unfortunately) are somehow the least enjoyable. When one character appears independent of the other, the watchability skyrockets. My only thought is that with two outlandish personalities, the wackiness competes with itself and it becomes clear just how hard the duo are trying to be funny.  

For example, the brief moment where the two are separated and are each with an American woman (who bear almost zero plot relevance) is amongst the funnier moments in the film. At the very least, it’s the most creative and entertaining. The funniest line of dialogue is said within the first 10 minutes of the film, and delivered neither by Holmes, nor by Watson, but by a belabored and unnamed judge who is describing in great detail the mechanics of his gavel. There are many scenes where the lack of chemistry between the men is clear. The first that jumps to mind is when they believe they have killed the Queen by inadvertently hitting her in the head with an old-fashioned camera while taking a “self-photograph”. The sentence you just read is funnier than what actually occurs on screen – think about the dreadfulness of that for a moment.  

The political commentary in the movie, interspersed seemingly at random, is groan-inducing, regardless of the viewers’ side of the proverbial aisle. A theme in the film is that Holmes cannot quite find a hat that he thinks completes his look. At one point he dons a red fez that says “Make England Great Again.” The audience erupts with laughter –  not. Later on, while discussing (for some reason, in a comedy film) the advantages and disadvantages of the electoral college, Watson says the point is to “prevent a trumped-up showman from taking office.” Again, met with thunderous laughter, but only in the script-writers’ mind. 

A large portion of the humor in this film is, unsurprisingly, slapstick. The opening scene features a young Holmes kissing the rear end of a donkey. The second scene features Holmes and Watson slapping one another in the face while trying to kill a mosquito that possesses a lethal sting. These types of uninspired hijinks continue, brutally and unendingly, throughout the film’s runtime. At one point, a man is stabbed in the back and says “I’ve been stabbed in the back.” Holmes comments that, yes, the gentleman has been deceived. It’s then revealed that the man has also, physically, had a knife thrown into his back, killing him. If that doesn’t make you laugh, I don’t know what will.  

The last big issue I had with the film (that I’ll write about) is the lack of any sort of meaningful plot. This is a movie that is a collection of scenes, that become more like vignettes, and the vignettes feature the same characters, but are otherwise rather unconnected. Each scene comes and goes and the viewer gains no additional knowledge about what is supposed to be happening in the film. The scene referenced earlier, in which they believe that they’ve killed the Queen, could be removed from the film in its entirety and not a modicum of coherence would be lost. There are many such scenes like this, that seem to be simply a result of one gentleman saying to the other “wouldn’t it be funny if….”, though it rarely turns out to be funny.  

After my first viewing, I really had no positive things to say about it. I thought that, yes, it’s true, this movie is as bad, if not worse than what the reviews said. I decided to watch it a second time to find anything at all to compliment this movie on, and I think I’ve done it. These are not redeeming qualities, nor do they equate to a good reason to watch this movie, but they are something a viewer could at least look out for to make the viewing experience not quite as intolerable.  

The best compliment I have for this film is that it looks great. The cinematography is not anything special or unique, but it accomplishes what it should in a film of this genre. While this isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, when everything else in the film seems to have somehow gone so sideways, it is one un-saving grace. In addition to the camera work, the set design and costuming is actually rather enjoyable. There are quite a few different sets in this movie, and all of them are believable and appropriate. When the two titular men go to the “rough side” of town, it actually feels like they’re in a back alley of England. They enter a men’s gym to confront a suspect and it does, in fact, look convincingly like a gym, with the patrons wearing appropriate clothing and whatnot. If someone made a legitimate Sherlock Holmes film using these exact sets and wardrobes, I think it would be a success.  

There are moments where Holmes’ genius takes over, and time stops. We’re treated to an over-dubbed explanation of the inner machinations of Holmes’ mind, and mathematical symbols and designs fill the screen. While I’m sure these are complete nonsense (to someone who might potentially be able to make sense of them), they do offer a rather interesting image. While this isn’t a novel thing to do in a film, it shows care and at least an attempt at doing something beyond what could be done using a camera alone. I give them points for making an attempt at doing something interesting – perhaps it’s undeserved, but we’re grasping for anything here.  

Ultimately, I have to agree with the masses – this is a bad, bad movie. Does it deserve the hate it gets? Probably, yes. But I rarely see the positive aspects of this film, scant though they may be, given the attention they deserve. I think this movie is not so bad that it becomes humorous as an object of ridicule, like The Room or Troll 2, but it is not nearly watchable enough to be something one should willingly subject oneself to. I would categorize it as unremarkable, unsatisfying, and forgettable, and perhaps the biggest sin – unfunny.  

1.5 mallards/5

-Maxwell