The Losers | C

The Losers is an action adventure movie based on the award-winning comic book of the same name by Andy Diggle and Mark Simpson. Having not read the original series I can't say how faithful the script is, but if the comic has the same convoluted plot as the movie then I'm sure Diggle and Simpson had to pay someone off for those awards.

The Losers begins with an elite Special Forces unit on a simple mission in Bolivia. The squad is led by Colonel Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Watchmen), and includes Pooch (Columbus Short, Death at a Funeral), Roque (Idris Elba, RocknRolla), Jensen (Chris Evans, Fantastic Four), and Cougar (Óscar Jaenada, Che: Part Two). After completing the mission, they are betrayed and ordered to be murdered by their superior, known only as Max (Jason Patric, In the Valley of Elah). Surviving their attempted assassination, the team tries to secure new passports and travel back to the United States while living off the grid. However, they are tracked down by the mysterious Aisha (Zoe Saldana, Avatar), who offers them new identities and safe transport in exchange for killing Max. The rest of the film follows the team's attempts to locate and eliminate Max to prevent him from supplying superweapons to terrorists.

 

Let me get this out of the way first: The Losers is somewhat entertaining. The shootouts are exciting, there's plenty of witty dialogue, and Chris Evans steals the show as the hilarious Jensen. Unfortunately, clever quips aren't enough to cover up the lackluster, recycled plotline used in this movie. Stop me if this sounds familiar—a highly trained military unit is betrayed by the higher-ups, and then said unit attempts to get revenge and clear their names. Sounds like a dozen different action movies you've seen, doesn't it? Sylvain White's (Stomp the Yard) direction is pretty hit-or-miss. Some scenes are well done, particularly a chase involving Jensen and the song "Don't Stop Believin'". In others, however, White resorts to many clichéd directorial techniques such as overuse of slow motion and shaky, handheld camera during fights. Besides Evans, who was fantastic, the rest of the cast also gave believable performances in their roles, but were nothing special.

 

While The Losers is funny and entertaining at times, the overall film is a choppy mess of explosions and jerky camera movements. Despite Evans' performance and some cool gunplay, the wholly unoriginal and uninteresting plot prevents the movie from really distinguishing itself from other similar action movies.