The Losers

***click the image for a surprise***

The H-Bomb: While carrying out an assignment in Bolivia, an elite five man Black Ops Team is double-crossed by CIA super-spook, Max (Jason Patrick), the mysterious “voice on the radio” who planned the operation. Believed to be dead in the States, the team lays low in Bolivia while their leader, Clay (Robert Downey, Jr. look alike Jeffrey Dean Morgan) sets about trying to track down Max… with no success. Then one night he’s approached by seductive Femme Fatale Aisha (Zoe Saldana, who’s everywhere these days), and after the two bond over a requisite man-on-woman fistfight (where she, in realistic fashion, matches him blow for blow) that destroys an entire hotel room, she agrees to help smuggle the team back into the States and help them find this slippery Max fellow. But the men find themselves asking each other, who is this chick, and what is she after?

Meanwhile, we find out that Max, the truly evil dude that he is, is about to purchase a new kind of bomb that destroys matter but doesn’t harm the environment. The perfect weapon for the eco friendly terrorist. So, will our heroes find Max in time to foil his plans for world domination… take a wild guess.

If your looking for a film with depth and insights into the human condition, that will broaden your worldview and make you a more enlightened and better person, then Goddamn are you in the wrong place. But if you are looking for an hour and a half of chaos and carnage, of mind numbing violence and explosions where shit gets shot up and blown up left and right, with only enough plot to move the film from one highly improbable yet enjoyable action scene to the next, then come on in.

I find action flicks like this hard to review, because basically, they are what they are. They most definitely are not high art, we’re not going to hear them mentioned during the awards season, they simply exist to entertain. And “The Losers” certainly does that. As long as you don’t think about it too hard as you’re watching it, you’re sure to enjoy it. It’s everything I expected it to be from watching the trailers; loud, dumb, and tons of fun. It’s a pure escapist film, completely free of all the brooding baggage of self-seriousness that have plagued other recent action films (yeah, “Bourne Trilogy”, I type that in your direction).

I’m not familiar with the director, Sylvain White, but he did a nice job of keeping the pace quick and the energy high. The film’s many gun battles are slickly shot and packed with so much mayhem, that I do wish they went for the messy, R-rated violence instead of going the bloodless, PG-13 route, though there is an eye gouging that gets pretty sick. But, despite the absence of gore, when it comes to delivering the thrills, it gets the job done. The villain’s top henchman gets his comeuppance in an unexpectedly gruesome way. Great stuff.

The entire cast does quite well, considering that the script didn’t exactly give them deep, multi-dimensional characters to explore. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who rocked as the sociopathic Comedian in “Watchmen”, here shows that he has the chops to pull off the roles of both action hero and leading man. With his gruff voice and imposing physique, I definitely believed that he could be the leader of this badass squad of soldiers. Zoe Saldana also delivers a solid turn as the beautiful yet deadly Aisha. She has the role of tough chick down cold, and I don’t think she’s ever looked sexier on film, it’s just too bad that the movie also went PG-13 with the sex scenes as well. Chris Evans plays Jensen, the clown of the squad with an affinity for pink t-shirts (movies like this always have to have a comic relief character), and he steals every scene he’s in.

Then finally, as Max, Jason Patrick portrays the kind of villain that audiences love to hate. With a smug expression that seems to be permanently pasted to his face, he kills without remorse and is completely devoid of any redeeming qualities. To him, ending a human life is equal to stepping on a cockroach. Man, woman, child… it doesn’t matter, if it’s in his interest to kill someone, he will do it without hesitation. At one point he shoots and kills his pretty young female assistant out of the blue. Why? Just to remind us of what a dastardly cretin he is. There’s another scene where you’ll wonder, “What is he doing to that midget?”, but I won’t get into that. He’s a one note, mustache twirling bad guy, and he certainly won’t go down alongside Darth Vader as being one of the great antagonists of film history, but Patrick does a great job at making the audience want to see very bad things happen to him.

Overall, this is no classic by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but if you’re a fan of wild, over-the-top, and highly unrealistic action fare, the kind of flick that won’t require too much thought on your part, where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, plain and simple, then go check this out. Otherwise, just wait for the DVD.