Directed by William Eubank from a script written by him and David Frigerio, Land of Bad provides an explosive approach to the war-action genre. The new war movie stars Liam Hemsworth as rookie Sergeant JJ "Playboy" Kinney, who joins a Delta Force team on a mission in the Philippines. But when the soldiers step into battle, the plan goes haywire, and it's up to drone pilot Captain Eddie "Reaper" Grimm (Russell Crowe) to get a stranded Kinney out from behind enemy lines. Land of Bad also stars Milo Ventimiglia, Ricky Whittle, and Luke Hemsworth.

CBR met up with Eubank to discuss his latest film and how it took over a decade for it to materialize. The filmmaker discussed how the movie managed to pair up the Hemsworth brothers for the first time on the big screen, and how it was more challenging for them because of the familiarity of their relationship. In addition, Eubank revealed all the training and preparation behind making Land of Bad look as realistic as possible.

CBR: What inspired you and David Frigerio to come up with this specific story and premise for Land of Bad?

William Eubank: We wrote this a very, very long time ago, while we were making the movie The Signal. We thought, or at least I did: "Oh, this movie is so crazy and weird; I'm never gonna get a job again. I gotta make something more straightforward and action-packed." [Laughs]. So, we were writing this movie on the weekends in coffee shops, while we were filming The Signal. At that time, drone warfare was really just beginning, so we thought: "Wow, what a crazy thing that somebody could be working from Las Vegas for Creech in the trenches with somebody who's across the world." And we just thought that's such a cool dynamic -- like a two-hander where the two people aren't really together.

At that time, that movie Good Kill had come out, and so I was like: "Well, I guess maybe they already sort of did it." But then I saw the movie, and that was more about the psychological aspects. As we got into it, and we started working with real drone operators and real Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTAC), and we spent a lot of time at Fort Irwin, we saw the brotherhood and the camaraderie that these guys had. You saw that these guys are so dedicated to their work and each other that it really isn't so much this individual psychological turmoil thing. You realize the people who end up in those positions and are doing that kind of work are just dedicated to their craft and to each other. And you're like: "Ah, that's the story. That's what I really want to make this about."

Of course, dealing with themes of violence, and is there a good version of violence? Is there a bad version of violence? Asking those questions, to me as a filmmaker, is always interesting. You want to do it in a way that's entertaining, fun, and crazy, but it's also important to me to sometimes ask those questions.

There are a lot of great war-themed action movies out there. What did you specifically want to avoid replicating?

I'm a student of life. So, for me, I'm just trying to learn more, and trying to create something impactful, fun, or that has some version of meaning. I'm never trying to avoid anything because I'm always just trying to copy greats. I'm always trying to get up there with the people that I love -- like Ridley Scott. My favorite war film is The Thin Red Line, which I guess I'm not trying to make by any means, even though that's my favorite one. This is just a different type of story. This is more like a '90s thriller -- a throwback that's just boots on the ground, just crazy action.

But yeah, I love Black Hawk Down. Ridley is so good at creating that fourth dimension -- with the ship flying, whether it's air, light, or however he does it, he's such a master. So, yeah, I'm always trying to do that, but I'm never really specifically trying to avoid anything. I always try to start with realism, even in the research phase, whether it's talking to real guys or watching movies like Restrepo, and seeing what is the real version of that and is that a story I want to tell or something I want to mimic? Or maybe I just understand it, and then I can tell my story now that I've understood what that really looks like.

Land of Bad is the first time Luke and Liam Hemsworth actually share the screen together. How did this come about?

It's really cool. Luke is such a strong actor. He's so talented. And I think, while we were shooting, he was nominated in Australia for an amazing indie that he had just finished. I think he'd been in another movie [Crypto] my little brother [Carlyle] had written, so we already knew him and knew he was the perfect character for that guy. Then, after Liam had expressed interest, which was a totally separate thing that we sent to his people, it was just like, "All right, guys, both of you are gonna be in this film." And yeah, it was cool, man. It was awesome. Watching them work together, and they obviously knew each other so well, so it was almost more like creating the distance in a relationship, which is sometimes probably harder than faking it the other way around. But yeah, they're both such amazing guys, and so dedicated to their craft that they got it done.

If there's a sequel, will Chris somehow factor in as well?

[Laughs]. Who knows? Who knows?

Let's discuss the action scenes because they stick out. They have a certain military feel, especially in terms of the rugged combat. I'm interested in finding out more about what training the actors underwent and who was responsible for the training.

It was all across the board. So, because you have JTA -- very specific protocols and 9-lines and all the things that you do as a joint tactical air controller -- that all came from a real JTAC instructor/JTAC from the Air Force named Kinney. So, we named the main character after him because he had trained us so much in the world of that. So, lots of training from there and he was on set. We met with him years ago --probably like 10 or 15 years ago when we wrote this thing, which we then rewrote when it came time to go, but the initial script was written like 10 or 15 years ago. Kinney has been with us all those years, asking: "Are you guys gonna ever make this movie?" And we did, so it was awesome to finally get him to come out to Australia to help advise the guys.

Before that, they did a lot of training with some retired Special Air Service (SAS) officers -- like real special forces guys in Australia -- with some amazing operators. Every day, for weeks, they had them doing clearings, house clearings, reloading things, the way you handle guns, the way you handle hostage situations, driving like crazy. They were doing driving stuff, even though we didn't even have any crazy driving in the film. But I saw these videos coming out of their training sessions. I wasn't there for all of them because I'm doing other things, but I would see training things every day. I'm like: "These guys are flipping cars around. What is going on out there?" [Laughs]. But lots of really cool training that they were doing.

Then, on the drone side, we had a real drone operator come out who had been at Creech in those rooms. He was advising Russell about the right way to say things, the right way to do things. Even with our set design, he was there, making sure that we had the right screens and all of that. So really cool. And we had all the real stuff -- like the real joysticks -- so all that is pretty true to life. The only thing I added was -- which I "Hollywood" it just for visuals -- was the windows in the room, just so it wasn't so dark. But that's it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but with Kinney and Reaper in specific, I don't think they ever meet each other physically in the movie. I think it also extends to the rest of the team on the floor versus the one in the control room. Did the actors actually meet while you were filming, or did everyone film the scenes separately?

That's a good question. So, yeah, they were totally apart. But what we would do is we would have Liam in a room way down the way with all his audio stuff, everything, and he would be communicating back with Russell [Crowe], who was really in his ear talking to him and all that. We had to devise a system for that, which was pretty complicated, obviously. But in the end, it worked out, and it really added that much realism to it.

Where it gets complicated is we shot the film this way: We were always doing the action first. And then I always had a drone flying overhead with real infrared, so it's real infrared when you're seeing it in the movie. By the time we were shooting the Russell parts, I had the drone parts playing, and he could actually move his joystick around and zoom in to the scenes as they were playing; they synched up. So, he could literally watch the scene unfold like it was really happening. It was pretty unbelievable. The only thing that wasn't realistic for him about that was, sometimes, he'd see the crew obviously shooting there, but he could at least still see the action. See things exploding. It was pretty awesome.

Land of Bad is now showing in theaters.