AT THE MOVIES WITH KASEY BUTCHER
When I walked into The Losers this week, I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t even so much as know who stars in or that it’s based on a comic book series. It turns out that I was in for a more pleasant experience than I expected.
The Losers is about Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Roque (Idris Elba), Jensen (Chris Evans), Pooch (Columbus Short), and Cougar (Oscar Jaenada), an Army black ops team who is betrayed by Max (Jason Patric), an elusive CIA man, and pronounced dead while on a mission in Bolivia. Months later, they are working odd jobs, trying to save money to buy black market passports so they can get home again. Meanwhile, Clay is approached by Aisha (Zoe Saldana), a mystery woman who says she knows how they can get to Max and seek their revenge. It turns out Max is up to much bigger and more dangerous schemes than his destruction of the team. Aisha delivers the Losers back to the U.S. after they promise to assassinate Max at any cost. The team is now caught in a game of cat and mouse that causes casualties and questions about who they can really trust.
I don’t often go to action movies, so I expected the following: things blowing up for seemingly no reason, mild sexism, and car chases in either abnormally large or tiny vehicles. The Losers delivered on two of three counts (possibly all three, depending on how you define a car chase). It also, however, was a lot of fun to watch.
I wonder, though, if my enjoyment was just a side effect of how pleasantly stupid The Losers really was. The movie starts with a pretty heinous act of violence that makes Clay’s wish for revenge, the fuel for the rest of the plot, believable and compelling at first, but his justified anger isn’t sustained enough to support the contrivance of the various twists remaining in the movie. In short, the plot isn’t really interesting or creative, so the entertainment value rests almost entirely on the characters.
Although corny and shopworn at times, the relationships between the characters were full of entertaining dynamics and enough quippy one-liners to overshadow some of the stupidity of the plot. Possibly because the characters are based upon a comic book series, they each have pretty distinct, sometimes hyperbolic personalities. I think, however, their categorization into character archetypes—the leader with a heart, the angry guy, the tech guy, the clown, the quiet one, etc—made the performances seem blasé. Everyone kind of looked like they were just going through the motions of performing in an action movie so they could get paid. It’s a disappointment too, because Morgan and Saldana have such potential. The exceptions are Evans, whose character’s hyperness required a lot of physical effort, and Jaenada, who speaks so seldomly he has to sell the character through body language.
The bad guy, Max, seems like a bunch of villains smooshed together. Sometimes he’s eerily calm; other times he was so manic I wondered if he was wired on something stronger than coffee. He has a big, stupid ex-military henchman for a sidekick, who he rarely relies on, as he’s not afraid to commit random violence himself. His sociopathy just seemed like a conglomeration of characteristics of action movie villains. There’s also a sore lack of backstory about him. How does he get away with his evil deeds as a member of the CIA? Does the government know and not care, or, worse, sanction his activities? Is he so smooth they have no clue? What happened to his deformed hand, which is gloved for most of the movie? Maybe these details are covered in the comic books, but, for me, not having the info in the movie detracted from the character.
Dumb and contrived as it is most of the time, The Losers also had some really enjoyable aspects. In motion, the team has the fun action-adventure vibe of movies such as The Italian Job or Ocean’s Eleven. Jensen and Pooch each have families who they are trying to get home to and, although they can’t get in touch, their attachment to watching over them through various technologies is a sweet detail that grounds the characters. Finally, the soundtrack can be entertaining, if a little over-the-top at times.
The end of the movie is left wide open, clearly leaving room for a sequel. Hopefully some of the character development issues and lingering questions are resolved then. For now, I’m rating The Losers 2.75/5 stars.
The Losers was directed by Sylvain White, runs 98 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, a scene of sensuality and language.
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