
James Bamford, an action director known for his impressive work, seems to be in perfect momentum, producing three films in a matter of months Shadow Land being the latest. His earlier movies, Air Force One Down and Jade, could be described as fascinating in concept but underwhelming in execution. Hopefully, the third time is indeed the charm.
The film begins with an old man who is tossing and turning in bed. He pulls out a gun and shoots someone who seems to be intruding into his bedroom. But wait, just as he goes to look at the man he shot, who does not even appear to be injured, he wakes up in his own bed.
It gets more intriguing as he looks outside and sees someone out there, or he thinks he sees someone. That’s what I call dramatic suspense. He goes out and searches for the man who has a mask on. At least at this point, the old man doesn’t pose any threat, the old man is Robert Wainwright (ex-US president Jon Voight, The Painter, Runaway Train) who seems to be living a peaceful life at his ranch without attending to the affairs of this world.
Absolutely, this is by no means the first time this has occurred. His particular detail advises him to get rid of the live ammo in his house and said, “I agreed to take a bullet for him, not from him.” This is followed by a flashback of flying the President’s chopper when he directed a raid on what is rumored to be a nuclear plant or facility in Astovia, the same fictional nation as the one in Air Force One Down even with the knowledge that there are Americans hostages in the country. As it turns out, the reports were incorrect, as the anniversary of the KRG Al-Qaeda attacks came around, and the operation ended in gruesome defeat.
The screenplay is composed by J. D. Zeik who’s written the cult films Ronin and Witchblade as well as the 2008 Steven Segal junk Pistol Whipped, and Ian Corson who previously typed the script for the Falling Through of the 2000s and was the director of Malicious in 1995 which was an imitation of Fatal Attraction. That they didn’t have any other recent works should have been a warning signal.
To be honest, the film feels so behind the times that I would not even be surprised if I came across a report stating that the screenplay for Shadow Land was penned in the early 2000s. For quite a while, this character has been feeling as if he is based on George W. Bush. He was involved in the E-Astovia conflict from the beginning, which is all too familiar when the writer’s name is associated with a company involved in oil and gas infrastructure regional development like the Burton Group, right? It’s precisely like Halliburton just rings a bell.
Somewhere around twenty minutes into the film, there is a waking dream of Wainwright witnessing the shooting of troops in combat and viewing hospitals full of American forces and civilians injured. That along with the title made me think that Shadow Land could turn out to be a ‘dream’ as far as the direction that was heading towards, or the audience could expect Dreamscape. The second feature critically deserving a PG-13 has Eddie Albert in it, who plays the presidential role while being a target of a hit-man entering his dreams.
The bad news is that Shadow Land is not even close to being that creative or intriguing. There’s barely anything to anticipate in this conspiracy thriller apart from a few interesting concepts, which subsequently undergo lazy treatment by the usual stereotypes, including whether or not Rachel and Elliot will reunite. In fact, that might be the most engaging out of all the plot twists in the movie.
Wainwright rubbed shoulders with quite a few characters, including, Jason (Sean Maguire, V for Vengeance, Once Upon A Time) Rachel’s former aid whose daughter was in Astovia at the time it all happened, as well as Rachel (Rhona Mitra, Skylines, Hard Target 2), an embittered ghostwriter brought to assist Wainwright in co-authoring his autobiography, and Dr. Elliot Davrow (Marton Csokas, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Sleeping Dogs) a psychiatrist that was called to check the mental state of the president. Perfectly, her ex-husband as well. All of which may have some motive to want him either dead or mentally out of the picture.
To make things worse, the film cannot figure out whether it wishes to dwell on the possible scandal involving the attack on Astovia and the subsequent change of regime or if it wishes to focus on whether there’s a conspiracy against Wainwright or it’s just a figment of his imagination. The consequence is unending apologies and almost no excitement. The eventual revelation is not remarkable in any manner, even though we were shown light to it and the build-up to the resolution is just as dull as everything else in the film.
Considering its storyline, Shadow Land had the substance to be a reasonable thriller. Sadly, the writers did not do anything with it. In fact, it is so poorly scripted towards the end of it, that I felt more compassion towards the villain as opposed to the so-called hero.
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