FILM REVIEW: THE LOSERS

Roadshow Films
Now Showing

The general consensus gleaned from the US reviews I read for The Losers seemed to be “not as crap as you'd think it is”. So with that backhanded compliment in mind, I settled in to watch Sylvain White's screen version of an apparently popular graphic novel (and aren't they all nowadays?) with slightly higher than zero expectations.

Admittedly, every time I saw the trailer for this (inadvertently at other Roadshow screenings) I kept thinking it was for the upcoming A-Team film (to be released by 20th Century Fox early June). And at first, you might think that's Javier Bardem but it's not. It's Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who bears a more than passing resemblance to the Spanish actor but he's very much a poor man's version in every respect.

Morgan is Clay who heads up a small US Special Ops team who are doubled crossed in the film's opening action sequence, which ends with the deaths of 25 children. Presumed dead and stranded in Bolivia, Clay, Roque (Idris lba), Pooch (Columbus Short), Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and Jensen (Chris Evans, the buffest computer geek you've ever seen, and the film's few highlights) are approached by the mysterious Aisha (Zoe Saldana, sans blue Avatar make-up. She is able to get them back to the States and happy to bankroll their mission to exact revenge on the guy who set them up.

That's Max, played by Jason Patric as a super villain wannabe who seems to have grown up on a diet of Bond villains, absorbing the psychopathy and quest for world domination (he's out to obtain some enviro-friendly nukes!?) whilst eschewing any of the panache; the kind of guy who'd shoot his female assistant in the face for not holding his umbrella steady on a windy beach. Like the rest of the film, Max is averse to subtlety.

The Losers is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and not taken seriously, simply enjoyed for what it is. But if the best you can say about a film is “not as crap as you'd think”, well, why would you bother? Here's hoping The A-Team aims higher than that.