A Thomas Bess review of:
Directed By: Sylvain White
Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Oscar Jaenada, Jason Patric
Run Time: 98 blissfully logic-free, endorphin-boosting minutes.
Two things to know before we get started. First, I have not read any of the source material upon which The Losers is based, so I’m not even going to try and guess. Second, I don’t expect much from my action movies. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I don’t expect much from my action movies beyond a goodly amount of violence, exotic locales, an interesting antagonist and an appropriate ratio of one liners from both heroes and villains. In that regard, The Losers hits all the right notes and should you go into the theater in the proper frame of mind (i.e. ready to sit back and watch things go boom) you’ll enjoy it just fine. On the other end of the spectrum, putting too much thought into it (say, more than a few cells worth) will cause head scratching and probably grumbling at the often kooky plot. To encapsulate, if you’re in the mood to watch things get demolished, you’ve come to the right place. If not, you’d be well advised to go crack a volume of Proust or Goethe and spare everyone a round of “this is soooooo stoopid” posts in the talkback threads. Understood? All right, lets move on.
The story (such as it is) goes a little something like this. A group of elite guerrilla ops types codenamed The Losers are on a rather prosaic mission in Bolivia when things go to hell and they’re set-up by an ominous Doctor Claw type by the name of Max (Patric). In the aftermath of the botched operation, the leader of the team (Morgan) is approached by mysterious bombshell Aisha (Saldana) with an offer. Kill Max and she’ll see to it that the Losers get their lives back. After a bit of mulling, the rest of the team (Evans, Elba, Short and Jaenada) agrees to the supposedly suicidal mission and from there it’s a veritable orgy of globe hopping and goon destruction as our ragtag group tries to stop Max from unleashing some sort of wonky future weapon that blows things up without actually exploding them. Along the way some revelations are made, a betrayal is revealed and millions of dollars worth of property damage are accrued. Oh and by the time the end credits roll you will be wondering just why no one’s ever thought to use Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing in an action movie before now.
So what’s good? Casting’s definitely solid — Morgan’s turn as Clay isn’t a patch on The Comedian, but he’s appropriately grizzled and no nonsense enough to command his team of misfits. Chief among them is Chris Evans as tech/communications genius, Jensen. He’s probably a bit too chatty for someone who’s supposedly elite special ops, but damned if he doesn’t steal just about every scene he’s in. It just now came to me that this is how Ryan Reynolds probably would’ve played Deadpool if the script for X-Men Origins: Wolverine hadn’t been an economy-sized pail of terrible. On the femme fatale front, Zoe Saldana spends most of her time on camera in various stages of undress and in slow motion, not that I’m complaining. In fact, her first act fight scene with Clay is probably the most memorable bit of violence in the whole film. The rest of the crew does a perfectly serviceable job as well, with Jason Patric busting out a pretty fair Lex Luthor impression, though he comes off as very nonchalant for someone who’s trying to start World War Three. Violence wise there are the requisite stabbings, shootings, vehicle explosions and all manner of things being smashed, burned, shattered or otherwise mangled. Some of it’s a bit too shaky-cam frenetic for my taste, but it never gets to the point where you’re not sure what’s going down. Finally, special bonus points for a scene near the end involving a motorcycle, a plane and a well placed sniper’s bullet. Sure it strains the boundary of human credulity, but holy shit did it look cool.
So what’s not so good? Well, while it might seem a tad bit hypocritical of me to have spent the opening paragraph demanding that folks turn off their brains to really enjoy this flick, I do have a few issues with the script. None of which are real deal breakers, but the Atomik Brain Canisters tend to get suspicious if I say there’s nothing wrong. To whit, there seems to be a whole lot of pointless in-fighting and backstabbing going on among the bad guys. Usually when something like this is in play it means that one faction or individual is going to turn on the others and help save the day, but that doesn’t happen here. Max just kills a whole bunch of his co-conspirators in the last act, if only to remind people one more time of how evil he is. Look, if we don’t get it by now, we don’t deserve to get it. Along similar lines, Max’s fate is pretty “meh”. In fact, fate is too strong a word, it comes off more like the set-up to next week’s episode. All it was really missing was an “I’ll get you next time Gadget–I mean Losers!” And don’t even bother trying to decipher Max’s motivations; they’re practically non-existent. Finally, I’m not really sure why this one was released as PG-13 as opposed to R. Not saying there’s enough carnage or language in it to warrant the higher rating, because there’s not, but it doesn’t really come off as something you’d take the kids to either. So why not just throw in some more blood and gratuitous language? It’s not like there’s much restraint shown anywhere else in the film.
Should you see it? To determine, answer this single, simple question. Are you in the mood for a mindless action romp, the very definition of a popcorn flick? If yes, grab a few friends and hit up a matinee, I’m pretty sure you won’t be disappointed. But if you’re in the mood to actually think, stay home with a good book or pop something cerebral (ed note: Blade Runner works just fine) into the ol’ BluRay Player. We’ll all be happier that way.
If a bloodless coup is awful and a full on air strike is perfect, I’d say The Losers is a rocket-propelled grenade blasted into a squad of cutthroat terrorists types and that’s pretty not damned bad.
Til next time, always remember that the calls are coming from inside the house.
Tom Bess recently shaved his legendary sideburns at a cost of two hours and five pounds. The end result is a slightly puffier, but much more aerodynamic movie-reviewing machine who is still patiently waiting for Allison Mack to return his calls. While he’s waiting, he’ll read copious amounts of Lovecraft and eat too many Peach Gummy Bears.
