Shadow Land (2024)

Shadow-Land-(2024)
Shadow Land

James Bamford, the action director is in high gear as he has produced three films within a span of months, Shadow Land being the most recent. This begins with an old man who is tossing and turning in his bed. Bamford’s earlier movies, Air Force One Down and Jades, seem to have interesting concepts but poor execution. Hopefully, this will change as it is the third time Bamford is directing.

The old man shoots a man whom he assumes to be intruding into his bedroom. But the man doesn’t seem to be injured nor does he look much in pain. Bamford ensures that the early scenes of the film are intriguing as the old man wakes up in his bed after shooting the mysterious man.

The anticipation in the movie builds further as the old man thinks he sees someone outside the window. It feels like we are close to a supposed climax moment in the film as he goes out in search of the man wearing a mask, suspense of this sort just makes for the best drama. This old man’s character, portrayed in the movie is Robert Wainwright, an ex-US president who seems indifferent to worldly affairs and tries to live peacefully on his ranch.

Sure, this is not the first time this has happened. His specific detail suggests he removed the live bullet from his house and said ‘I have not agreed to take a shot from him, I have agreed to take a shot for him’. He then flashes back to flying the President’s helicopter when he ordered an attack on a country, apparently Astovia which is again fictional, while still being aware there were American citizens held captive in that country. Well, the reports were wrong, because as it was the anniversary of the KRG Al-Qaeda attacks, it was not an operation but an abysmal loss instead.

In the casting notes it was particularly stated that J.D Zeik was the one who single-handedly wrote the script. J D Zeik is credited for Ronin and Witch Blade, Pistol Whipped is another film where he worked along with Steven Segal in 2008 he wrote the film. Ian Corson is also notable for writing scripts in the Falling Through of the 2000s. Ian also directed a film in 1995 named Malicious, as a rather odd imitation of Fatal Attraction They should have noticed that none of them had any other recent works.

To be fair, the movie comes off as quite dated, and I wouldn’t be shocked if I read a news article saying the Shadow Land’s script was written in the early 2000s. For quite some time, this character has appeared to be loosely modeled on George W. Bush. He’s been part of the E-Astovia conflict from the start, which is all too familiar in this context when a writer’s credits include a firm such as the Burton Group that is involved in oil and gas infrastructure regional development, right? It’s something very similar to Halliburton.

Approximately twenty minutes into the film, there is a waking vision in which Wainwright sees soldiers in combat being shot and nurses plentiful injured American soldiers and civilians in the hospitals. That together with the title made me think that Shadow Land probably could not be regarded as a dream considering the direction the plot was going or that the audience would probably be treated to a Dreamscape. The second feature critically deserving a PG-13 has Eddie Albert in it, who portrays a dreaming president during an active talk to an assassin.

The bad thing is that Shadow Land cannot be termed as either creative or impressive. There isn’t much to look forward to in this conspiracy thriller alongside a handful of unique elements, which Side characters make zero effort to incorporate into the bigger picture, including the plot of Rachel and Elliot deciding whether or not they will be together again. Even that is perhaps the most entertaining of all the unrevealed points of the film.

To make matters worse, the movie cannot determine whether it would rather explore the potential scandal that arose from the attack on Astovia and the consequent regime change or whether it would prefer to explore whether Wainwright is being conspired against or if that is just in his mind. The result of this is endless apologies and almost no thrills. The ultimate explanation is in no way extraordinary, although it was hinted at and even in terms of internal logic the resolution is just as bland as the rest of the film.

In its synopsis, Shadow Land had the ingredients of a decent good thriller. Unfortunately, that was not the case with the writers. It is so bad in terms of language towards the end that I had more pity for the antagonist than the alleged protagonist.

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