THE LOSERS (Sylvain White). 97 minutes. Opens Friday (April 23). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
There’s something almost admirable about The Losers, a movie that has abso lutely no pretensions of being anything more than an engaging time-waster and delivers well enough on that modest ambition.
[rssbreak]
Based on the Vertigo comic book written by Andy Diggle and illustrated by the artist known as Jock, The Losers follows a heroic quintet of CIA black-opsters – Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Roque (Idris Elba), Jensen (Chris Evans), Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and Pooch (Columbus Short) – disavowed by the U.S. after a kill op goes bad in Bolivia. After four months lying low, they’re approached by a mysterious and highly connected woman (Zoe Saldana) who offers a simple deal: kill the highly placed douchebag who set them up, and they can all go home.
It’s really just another iteration of the A-Team model: an elite mili tary squad betrayed by the government they trusted and forced to mount an elaborate counteroffensive to clear their names. But it’s a brightly lit, engag ingly assembled piece of machinery.
The actors aren’t asked to stretch. Morgan’s a scowler with a heart of gold Elba’s a hothead with a self-preser vation streak Evans is an easily distracted chatterbox Short’s worried about his pregnant wife Saldana runs on rage and sarcasm and, um, Jaenada has a really cool hat.
As the sneering baddie whose peevishness sets the whole story in motion, Jason Patric spends the whole picture channelling late-1980s Christopher Walken and acting like he’s doing the movie a favour just by appearing in it. I think it’s supposed to be funny (Patric’s got a really odd sense of humour), but I can’t be completely sure.
Director Sylvain White (Stomp The Yard) doesn’t worry about how it all fits together. He lets cinematographer Scott Kevan play with light levels and film grain so the Puerto Rican and Vancouver locations look vibrant and gritty at the same time, and he encourages the effects guys to blow up all the crap they want.
This is what a movie like The Losers is supposed to deliver: proficient pyrotechnics with a minimum of posturing. Sure, I’ve seen better, but I’ve seen much, much worse.
