Russell Crowe has been a regular fixture in action films for the past 25 years. After receiving his first nomination for The Insider in 1999, Crowe became best known for his role in the historical epic Gladiator, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Crowe continued to impress with his performance in A Beautiful Mind, earning him another Oscar nomination. Notably, all three films received nominations for Best Picture, with Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind both winning the award.
After Gladiator, Crowe continued to star in action movies, such as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, 3:10 to Yuma, Body of Lies, and Robin Hood, the latter two reuniting him with Ridley Scott. In recent years, other than appearing in the superhero movies Man of Steel and Thor: Love and Thunder, Crowe has mostly been relegated to B-action movies, such as True History of the Kelly Gang, Unhinged, and Land of Bad – which were either panned by critics or failed to make of an impression at the box office.
Land Of Bad Receives A Middling Accuracy Score
Its Special Ops Mission Is Tactically Wrong
Land of Bad‘s special ops mission is tactically wrong, receiving a middling accuracy score from an expert. The 2024 action thriller follows a US Army special forces team that is ambushed while on a mission to recover an intelligence ᴀsset, and their sole hope for survival rests with a distant Air Force drone pilot, Captain Eddie “Reaper” Grimm (played by Russell Crowe), who aids them during a grueling 48-hour battle. Land of Bad‘s cast also includes Liam Hemsworth, Luke Hemsworth, Ricky Whittle, and Milo Ventimiglia.
In an Insider video, US Army special operations expert Bob Keller rated Delta and special forces scenes in movies for realism, including the operations and skills during the hostage rescue scene in Land of Bad. The expert says the movie is tactically unrealistic during several key scenes, such as the HALO jump, but decent in terms of gear and weapons handling. Overall, he gave it a 5/10 in terms of realism. Read his full comments or watch the portion of the video below:
They’re doing a Halo, it looks like, they’re opening low. I’m sure every everyone at the unit is Halo qualified. Is it a mission or is it a infill platform that we’re going to use? Most likely not. And it’s all because of once you get under canopy is everyone going to land together. If if everyone doesn’t land together, well pretty much mission’s over. So like to do that with a guy that does it that’s never jumped before, never ever going to happen. He’d be hooked up to one of the operators, tandem him in.
Never happened. You could not do that. He’s about ready to call this burden and launch missiles. He’s not doing that by himself, like he has to have a ground force commander saying, “Roger, you can actually drop bombs.” And he wouldn’t be sitting there by himself. Like you have a JTAC with you. You’re not going to leave the guy alone. And it would usually be it probably be two people. It would be whoever’s the team commander or the ground force commander, whoever is going to be in charge, making those calls. And then you’d probably have another shooter with those guys as well.
That’s a tough one with the kids involved. Is it a friendly kid? The kid could be friendly on either side. So that is a tough call and me personally, probably would have done that and that could be different for every team, or it could be different for every guy. One guy could just be like, “No, I’m not going to watch this” or “I’m going to do it,” and then get in trouble from everyone from his commander. That’s a tough one to say, “Oh yeah that’s 100%.”
Because of the opening scene in the helicopter and all like that being so wrong, not only just movie wrong, but tactically wrong because of that, because the rest of it, actually the gear’s not bad. Weapons handling is not bad. All that put together, it would be split. I’d give it a five.
What The Expert’s Comments Mean For Land Of Bad
There Was An Attempt At Accuracy
Director William Eubank and his co-writer David Frigerio actually attempted to make Land of Bad as accurate as possible, spending two weeks embedded with actual JTACs at Fort Irwin National Training Center. Their hands-on experience in forward air control was in-depth, and they even conducted nine-line close air support briefings with F-35 pilots during training exercises. Despite their best efforts, Land of Bad still missed several key tactical realities, according to the expert, proving that dedication alone can’t always guarantee authenticity in filmmaking.
Source: Insider
