"The Losers" (2010) - Movie Review

“The Losers” is everything that indicates of summer blockbuster around the corner. It also indicates that how hard it is going to be for me. Another adaptation from the comic world, Sylvian White directs this explosive, sexy, grungy, sleek and predictable film. Why they are called the title is unknown, may be they would eventually lose everything in their life? Too philosophical for a bang-bang film.

Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Jensen (Chris Evans), Roque (Idris Elba), Pooch (Columbus Short) and Cougar (Oscar Jaeneda) are indeed “The Losers”. Team working for CIA, they make sure bad people are killed and they are done with pure fun. In that opening sequence for showing their talents, they jump in among fifty men with AK-47 and take every one of them with pleasure. Then they rescue a group of children used as a mule for drugs and in the chopper they were supposed to leave, they let the kids go. The helicopter is targeted and trashed completely. They fake their death in the process with no choice and vanish. These are the good guys.

Apart from a radio voice, Max is the man who wrote their script to be killed and hence Clay the moral compass of this gang cannot get over the dead children. In comes Aisha (Zoe Saldana) the sex pot with a fetish for violence, offering them ride back home and an opportunity to kidnap Max. Everything is funded and she is in for something else, if you have not figured that out already. Thereon it is shoot first and ask for grenades immediately.

So it is becoming a procedure for the apologies from my side to the unknown readers. The readers looking for a good time absenting them from themselves and bedraggle in this action ride. I am with them and would like to switch off myself if a movie lets me do so and have fun with it. “The Losers” did that a few times with Chris Evans and Columbus Short making their characters work on buddy comedy. It also invited me in for a cool experience with some grunge rock music. But in this short hour and half film, it was elsewhere with me.

For a movie goer looking for that moderate entertainment to barely get good value, the film meets just what they need. While I did like these guys beyond the shooting game, they are not the buddies who I would think it to be cool to have drinks with. They are fun among themselves and does not strike a level of empathy with their audience. In action films with random comedies, that becomes the make or break deal.

Take “Midnight Run”, one of the best action comedy films I have ever seen. Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin bring two spectacular characters. An ex-cop turned bounty hunter and an accountant who embezzled his mob boss on the run. Both of them live among the undergrounds of low character in some level or other and yet at the end of the film, we absolutely love them. Robert De Niro’s character is foul mouthed, bad tempered and would not be a good man to hangout with but we get him and that gets a special point. “The Losers” can be left in the comic books with fancy faces and graphic presentations instead of a full blown film.

Sylvian White like many directors up and growing has worked out the stylish factor for a macho film. Every one of the directors with good financial back up gets that right. May be it is the music video trend that has brought the muse in them, they do a damn good job of mixing action, sex and music in precise fashion. White needs to work out his story and characters now.

Aisha’s character should have been more than a bad girl ready to get rough. She is brought in to play around with the sexual tension among these men and as though cracking a joke, she ends up with Clay with no questions asked. There is not even an attempt to make it a little more important to keep on our toes. “The Losers” will dethrone the existing box office number one and many people will look at me crazy for taking a high pedestal but I did not have the fun I thought would have.