Warner Bros. Pictures brings us another comic book adaptation in ‘The Losers’, directed by Silvain White. In a world where such movies are rarely done well, the film is lackluster and generic. It isn’t incredibly bad, but it could easily have been much better.
The movie opens to the aforementioned Losers, a CIA black-ops force composed of the driver Pooch (Columbus Short), the demolitions expert Roque (Idris Elba), the hacker Jensen (Chris Evans), the sniper Cougar (Oscar Jaenada), and their operation leader, Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). They take their orders from Max, a man who apparently has higher standing in the American government than anybody else. Max orders a bombing run on a Bolivian drug lord’s complex that the Losers targeted, and when they find that the guy is using local children as mules, the Losers storm the place and save the kids in a manner similar to a propaganda film.
Max then orders the Losers’ chopper to be destroyed with them in it. The helicopter is blown up, but not the team (they had given their seats to the Bolivian kids) who decide to exact revenge on Max with the help of Aisha (Zoe Saldana) who promises to have them removed from the list of deceased and cleared of all charges so that they may resume their lives.
With better writing the movie could have been a serious, stylish grudge match that viewers could recognize as being very cool. Instead there are very cliché scenes of moral conflict, tension and betrayal that the average viewer has seen plenty of in the past, and none of these scenes add anything to ‘The Losers.’ They do nothing except for fluffing the plot; the typical viewer will not sympathize with the characters for these scenes simply because it’s something you could find in almost any bad movie.
The acting wasn’t extraordinary either, but it’s good enough to engage the viewer. One could expect a better performance of actors like Morgan, but with the script given to him, I’d imagine there’s only so much he could do to make it work. The star of the show turns out to be Chris Evans. Any scene with him is golden because Evans is the only one who perfectly captures the character he’s portraying. Any time other characters try to be funny, it comes off as dumb, silly, or not in character, and then Evans picks up the laugh that the other characters tried to get.
The movie is based on a DC Vertigo comic book series of the same name with phenomenally better writing. Upon hearing of the connection, I picked up some of the books, and the contrast is almost absurd. The big difference is in the attitude. As a movie, it’s very laid-back, half-serious and unprofessional, whereas in the books I’ve read each character is deadly serious about their revenge on Max and the task at hand for them.
In the end the movie has a degree of style to it, and if better written it could have been a more serious ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ instead of a near-generic action movie. The dialogue, despite not fitting the plot most of the time, is funny enough at times to redeem some scenes. Again, this is mostly due to Evans.
I’m not sure what leaves a worse taste in my mouth: the movie that tries to be something it’s not, or the movie that doesn’t try to be anything. ‘The Losers’ lives up to its title, essentially doing both. It is poorer than comic book adaptations usually are, and the acting deviates from the attitude of the plot so much that it can’t be called a proper variation.
Grade: D+
