The Losers: Movie Review

It’s been a long time so I’ll be catching you up on a few movies I have seen recently over the past few weeks. I’ll start with the most recent which was not the best by any means.The Losers is a sort of film that you watch the trailer for and hope for one of two things. A: That it will be as awesome and funny as the trailer makes it out to be, or B: That it will be better than the annoying ‘I’m cooler than every other movie’ attitude the trailer shows. Of course, I fell into the latter category, since I thought the trailer was basically a raucous music video complete with bad slow-mo shots of guys in sunglasses and glorified violence.

Alas, the movie was exactly what the trailers showed it was going to be which bodes well for all you people who fall into category A. It also means that your probably a pre-teen boy that spends most of his time playing video games and/or can’t understand why your mother/girlfriend/wife thinks your immature and insensitive. If on the other hand you fall into category B, then know this…this is a noisy, over-edited, confusing (visually, not the plot; as a matter of fact I think my 4 year old son wrote this) sometimes funny and most of the time - chauvinistic film about explosions, guns, bad guys, guns, guns and oh yeah…guns.

The Losers follows a band of specialized soldiers (see a cast list) who refer to themselves as losers (…), who are framed for a horrendous crime they didn’t commit. Now the film goes over the top here. It’s as if the screenwriters thought of the worst crime a murderer could commit, then multiplied it by 25 and added a missile and a helicopter explosion for the sake of bad-awesomeness. Anyway, in a career misstep (that’s 1 miss Saldana) Zoe plays Aisha, a mysterious girl comes into their lives to help them take down the bad guy Max (Jason Patric) who frames them while dealing with double crossings, bombs and old frenemies.

That’s it. Sorry if I ruined the movie for you but that is literally all that happens. The ending is groan inducing as we see the entire script written to have a sequel…translation: Nothing is resolved. I guess they thought this would be a wildly popular movie; but after a tepid reception to a sparsely populated theater on a Friday night, it doesn’t look like the movie will be breaking any records, even with all the game playing pre-teen boys. Other things the film is guilty of besides the slow-mo ‘we’re cool’ shots are excessive use of the American flag, swooshing noise every time the camera shot changes, very loud guitar music throughout.

Its not that I hated the film, it’s just that it really annoyed me. There are a few bright spots. Chris Evans does great as a techie punk who is kinda a nerd. I still can’t picture him as the next Captain America though (how’s that for nerdy). The actors in general seem to be having a really good time and none of them do badly, it’s just that the directors and editors never allow us much time to see anything really develop emotionally, or the characters to interact on different levels. Instead, we are thrown right into the whirlwind music video with loud music and explosions pummeling our skulls, twisted flashing images searing our eyes and are expected to cheer the whole way, rather than blow chunks.

Final Consensus:
See it now!!!!
See it in theaters!!!
Rent it on DVD/BluRay!!
Wait for it on TV!
Don’t Bother
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