The Russell Crowe flop coming to Netflix this week
Long gone are the days of Russell Crowe being an A-lister, with the Academy Award winner happy to sign on for what’s feeling increasingly like a never-ending stream of forgettable genre flicks. One of them is on its way to Netflix, and the smart money is that it ends up as one of the streaming service’s most-watched titles.
Why? Because it’s an all-guns-blazing action flick with a recognisable star in the lead. It doesn’t matter that Land of Bad flopped at the box office after barely recouping a third of its budget from cinemas, the chances are exceedingly high that for the sole reason it’s packed full of wall-to-wall shootouts and explosions, it’s been pre-ordained for success on the market-leading platform.
It sounds reductive, but almost every single week there’s a monotonous actioner making waves on Netflix’s top ten. Land of Bad has a curious collection of parts and it’s a deeply silly film on every level, but those are among the many reasons why it’ll waste no time at all capturing the imagination of subscribers when it lands on Thursday, July 18th.
It’s got impressive B-movie pedigree, with Land of Bad hailing from director William Eubank, the filmmaker responsible for 2014’s sci-fi thriller The Signal, Kristen Stewart’s Lovecraftian aquatic terror Underwater, and found footage sequel Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin.
It’s even got two Hemsworth brothers for the price of one, with youngest sibling Liam playing the lead role of army sergeant JJ Kinney, while oldest brother Luke plays fellow sergeant Abell. Hollyoaks favourite Ricky Whittle is also present and accounted for, with Crowe fulfilling expositional duties as erstwhile ‘guy in the chair’ Eddie Grimm. His codename? Reaper. Get it? Because his name’s Grimm. Top stuff all-round.
The routine story follows the trial-by-fire of the youngest Hemsworth, who refuses to abandon the rest of his Delta Force squad when they’re ambushed by enemy forces in the Philippines. His best shot at survival comes from above, with Crowe lending his gravitas to the drone pilot doing his best to keep him alive during a 48-hour battle for surivival.
These by-the-numbers thrillers have become Crowe’s bread and butter in recent years, whether he’s suffering from a murderous case of road rage in Unhinged, uncovering an amnesiac murder mystery in Sleeping Dogs, or dealing with the devil twice over under very different circumstances in both The Pope’s Exorcist and The Exorcism, two movies released little over a year apart that have nothing to do with each other beyond their nomenclature.
Land of Bad is not a good movie, but it’s exactly the sort of movie that ticks the brain-off boxes Netflix users are often found looking for.