The Losers

An US Special Forces team are on an important mission in Latin America. The crew is lead by Clay (Morgan), and comprises driver Pooch (Columbus Short), sniper Cougar (Oscar Jaenada), knife expert Roque (Elba, a familiar face to fans of The Wire) and techie Jensen (Evans, on hand mainly to provide comic relief). These are the good guys.

The bad guy is a mystery villain named Max (Jason Patric), who inexplicably interferes with the team’s mission to destroy the base of a Bolivian drug dealer and free the children working there as drug mules. The Losers want revenge from the man they discover is a CIA big shot. They are joined by Aisha (Saldana, looking rather less blue than when we last saw her in Avatar), who has her own motives for bringing Max to justice and a ready-formed plan for how they can get to him.

Oddly, if rather refreshingly, this film is less violent than the average action adventure. The usual action movie conventions are all included: dynamic freeze frames, slow-motion walks towards the camera, and witty one-liners in the heart of the fight sequences. Like pretty much every action movie these days, this is based on a comic book series. The familiar premise makes comparisons with The A-Team somewhat inevitable, but this film manages to discover its own style and humour, delivering the breezy and uncomplicated fun of watching a group of underdogs fighting against bigger evils.

One of the most memorable scenes in this movie is an amusing undercover break-in, during which security guards are gunned down to the sweet sound of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’, a sequence which is as enjoyable as it is ludicrous, much like the rest of the film. The Losers doesn’t seem to take the plot or the characters too seriously, a good indication that we shouldn’t either.

Shoshana Eilon