The Losers is a movie.
It was fun. That’s all you need to know about the new movie “The Losers.” If you try to dissect it or make sense of some of the plot flaws, you will be saddened. Go into the theater knowing that you put $10 down to watch a lot of cool shoot-out sequences, big explosions, some slow-motion love making and fast-paced dialogue and I promise you will leave happy.
“The Losers” begins in a Bolivian jungle where a special ops team of five soldiers need to “paint a target” on a drug lord’s villa. (To paint a target means to place a laser target on an object such as a drug lord’s villa so the missiles on an overhead fighter jet can destroy the target with pinpoint accuracy. I feel that I need to explain that because it is not explained fully in the movie. If it wasn’t for “Clear and Present Danger,” I wouldn’t have known what was going on either. Thank you, Tom Clancy.)
While the team is painting the target, they see 25 children inside the villa, the team decides to do the heroic thing and rescue the children. This is a great action sequence, with a lot of video game-like violence. The director, Sylvain White, must own an Xbox and a copy of “Call of Duty Modern Warfare” because that was exactly what it felt like in the first 10 minutes of the film. The children are rescued and all is well until the evil super villain, Max (played by Jason Patric, but not seen at this time), takes revenge on the team for not following orders therefore eliminating the children. I know it is extreme, but if it didn’t happen there would be no movie.
The Losers are now stranded in Bolivia and the team leader Clay (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) wants revenge on Max. Through a well-choreographed hotel room fight between Clay and Aisha (played by Zoe Saldana), we find the team going back to America to find Max and get their revenge. (Now that I think about it, this is the second movie where Morgan has a violent fight with a woman, the first being in “Watchmen.” I wonder what that says about the types of roles Morgan chooses.)
We are soon introduced to Max. Max is a super dry super villain. Without his dryness, he is another villain “off the factory” line. Patric brings a new personality to the Max character, he is somewhat mysterious and very evil but in a way he is likeable. He does fall into some of the evil villain stereotypes, which we have seen before. He even has an evil henchman. Max still has the same wants and desires as any other super villain – to take over the world or start a war between countries or to steal a lot of money. Have the Hollywood writers really exhausted all the possibilities of what motivates an evil super genius? I hope not. As far as “The Losers” is concerned the answer is “yes,” they have exhausted the Max character’s motives but they make up for it in his persona.
The Losers begin their strategy to abduct Max, but through an intense action sequence in downtown Miami where they mistakenly take a very valuable object of Max’s. Max needs this item to fulfill his plans of evil doing. All along there is some alpha dog tension between The Losers and a lot of attraction between Clay and Aisha. This story line has been done before but that’s OK.
All this action finally climaxes when the story brings everyone to a Los Angeles shipyard. There is some clever double crossing that adds a “how did that just happen?” moment and the film ends with a nice set up for a sequel. Does it need one? I guess the box office sales will determine that.
After everything is said and done, “The Losers” is a movie, no more, no less. You will most likely laugh, you will most likely be entertained, and you will most likely recommend it to friends (if those friends are males ages 18-34).
Should you see this movie? Please refer to the opening paragraph.
