All of this babbling leads to one point : The Losers... is the loser... of the losers.
The Losers centres
around the members of an elite Special Forces unit sent to the Bolivian
jungle on a search and destroy mission.
However,
things soon go awry when a bunch of little kids get thrown in the way
and it soon becomes apparent that this rag-tag team of specialists are stuck in the middle of a pretty dodgy double cross.
The team - Clay,
Jensen,
Roque, Pooch and Cougar - are forced to fake their own deaths and are
now on the hunt for the man that ruined their lives - a powerful enemy
known only as "Max".
There is nothing, techincally, wrong with The Losers.
In theory, it has got a crazy amount working in it's favour as a Friday night popcorn
film : It's fun, it's light hearted, it's sexy and action packed.
But for some reason... it kind of doesn't work.
Part
and parcel of it's small success and failings comes from it's need to
disregard the constrictions of the genre it's living within.
Yes,
it's fun to bend the rules (which it does, very well at times), but
sometimes the rule bending destroys what makes this particular genre
work so well. Case in point : "The Token Wise-Ass". Every action
movie has one, the quirky wacky dude who (in order to break the tension
of a major action sequence) whips out some smart-ass line. It's cheesy,
but it works, the tone of the film needs that break of tension.
However,
when EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER is the "Token-Wise-Ass" (including the
villain), where EVERY SINGLE LINE is delivered like it's the "comedic
flair"... the movie loses all sense of structure.
Why? By taking
everything in a lighthearted manor, you remove the tension. If you
remove the tension, the cheesy bits of "comedic flair" are shown up for
what they are... not particularly funny lines. You can't have an ice breaker without the ice - ya dig? It's like Terminator 2
only having the phrase "Chillout Dickwad" on repeat for 2 hours without
the crazy robot chasing a small boy. It just doesn't work.
Comedy film theory aside, there is still quite a lot to like about The Losers. Avatar's Zoe
Saldan is smoking hot, Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets the mix of badass and
humour right and Jason Patric is gloriously eccentric.
Sadly, it's not quite there... it's a loser. DVD Special Features
Considering the flick only managed to scrape together a little over $25M worldwide (the film cost $25M to make) and The A-Team still
bombed despite taking in $176M worldwide (bear in mind, that action
epic cost $110M to make) it's of little surprise that special features
are few and far between. Included here is the featurette "Zoe and
the Losers". It's about as entertaining as a punch to the groin -
hardly the best selling point for a film which needs DVD sales to help
it turn a profit.
Conclusion - Movie: 60% Extras: 40%
|
