The Losers

Review by Sean Lynch

You have to love a movie like The Losers which serves up a title that you just know will eventually be used against itself by some pompous, unimaginative journalist. 

What makes the situation for The Losers even worse is the fact that, not only was it a box office bomb in the States, but now it's going head-to-head with the bigger budgeted, almost identical 80s retro rewind The A-Team. An 80s revamp which will make some big bucks.

Ultimately making The Losers... the loser.

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 smack bang in the middle of a 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.

Look, there is nothing wrong with The Losers. In theory, it's got a lot going for it as a decent 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.

It's like Terminator 2 only having the phrase "Chillout Dickwad" on repeat for 2 hours. It just doesn't work.

Comedy film theory aside, there is still quite a lot to like about The Losers. 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.

3 out of 5

The Losers
Australian release: 27th May, 2010
Official Site: The Losers
Cast: Zoe Saldana, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Oscar Jaenada, Jason Patric
Director: Sylvain White