The Losers Review

Members of a CIA Special Forces team in Bolivia are tasked at confirming the location of a drug smuggler Fadhil at his compound in the jungles. They spot him but just arriving is a group of children that he plans to use as mules. When the Lt. Col. Franklin Clay tries to call off the bombing of the site, he’s told it’s still a “go”. The group manages to rescue the children but there is only room for them on the exit helicopter which is promptly blown out of the sky. The team realizes that they were supposed to be on board and they would have been killed. They decide to keep up the facade of their demise and try and find a way to avenge their deaths.

Clay (Jeffery Dean Morgan) is having a hard time dealing with no longer being a Colonel. His second in command Rogue (Idris Elba) reminds him that he’s got to find a plan to get his team home as they are stuck in Bolivia doing odd jobs like working in a doll factory. Pooch (Columbus Short) has a pregnant wife back home and Jensen (Chris Evans) has a niece that he misses. Sniper Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) patiently waits for the next move. Clay is approached by the beautiful mysterious Aisha (Zoe Saldana) who offers them a chance to return stateside if they would help her track down their handler Max, who betrayed them. Max (Jason Patric) keeps himself well fortified and surrounded by his own personal army. His dopey right hand man is Wade (Holt McCallany) who misinterprets Max’s nod and throws a guy off a roof instead of breaking an arm. Max was trying to get a group of scientists in Dubai to create these sonic dematerializers called Snooks that can literally make a small island disappear. It’s up the Losers, as Clay refers to his team, to stop him.

Director Sylvain White, whose last project was Stomp the Yard, worked on a script by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt from an adaptation of the Vertigo comic book series of the same name. It maintains the same over the top nonstop action as one would expect from its source material. The characters fill their stereotypical niches from the bad guy being nasty evil to the stoic good guy leader. The female lead Zoe Saldana is cryptic and lethal who may have another agenda. You have to wonder how someone as small as she is could win a fight with Jeffery Dean Morgan. There’s not a lot of blood spilt, you don’t see piles of dead bodies. The gruesomeness of killing the kids is supposed to be the big motivation for taking revenge on Max, but you pretty much forget about it. There are plenty of jokes and amusing setups. Not to mention explosions galore. Not having read the comic, I don’t know how close it is to what was filmed. It does offer a nice little escape and worth spending time with losers.
(Review by Reesa)