A friend forwarded me a review of The Losers by the Hollywood Reporter, and I was a little startled to read the opening sentiments: “The Losers is a cartoonish nonstop action movie in which characters zip around the world, breaking, entering and blowing things up without any pretense to logic,” it begins. “It’s a world devoid of any geopolitics, connective tissue, human backgrounds or ideals other than greed and self-preservation.”
I nodded along, in complete agreement.
Then I realized THR meant that as a criticism.
This is as brisk and nimble a comic book movie as you will find – sleek to the point of slippery. And I liked it that way (hey, who doesn’t love a slip ‘n slide). Now granted, I’m the culture guy here (not the comics guy), so I have no idea about how faithful things are. But this movie felt to me like I was watching a comic book. From the editing rhythm to the spontaneous shifts of tone and locale (Miami to Los Angeles in three seconds flat), from the urgent yet rushed emotions to the way the tables are turned in the blink of an eye, this is indeed, as THR says, “an action film designed for those suffering from ADD.”
ADD, or those who are just growing a little sick of every single action film posing as some sort of revelation.
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Yes, there’s a place for dark, contemplative character studies, like The Dark Knight. Sure, we can skew pop art towards the darker end of the emotional spectrum, like Spider-Man 2. We can go topical, and comical, with something like Hellboy or Iron Man. But we don’t need that from every movie. While Iron Man allowed Robert Downey Jr. to run wild, I went into Sherlock Holmes and was bored sick by all the needless convolution. A couple weeks ago, I sat down for some Krakken goodness at Clash of the Titans, only to watch Perseus and Zeus rambling on and on, through one heavy-handed ethical monologue after another.
For the love of god: There are times when you just need to show a hint of a smirk. Not every film needs to be Hamlet. Or hell, Gladiator. When your tagline is “Release the Krakken!” believe you me, we’re not making a full emotional investment in the thing.
So when The Losers starts almost mid-sentence, at breakneck speed with some smirking super warriors, I perked right up. And before we even see the opening credits, we’re storming a drug compound with some hard-ass special forces experts. One by one, they decimate their enemy, and director Sylvain White tips his hand, with a highly unusual visual scheme. With each and every kill shot, White freezes the frame. Just for maybe half a second. But the result is that we start to get little pull-away moments – just like a comic book – little framed kill shots in the fog of war.
Now I was sitting next to critics who audibly scoffed at all these overt stylistic devices. Meanwhile I was just lapping it up. I can’t remember another film that constructed a fight sequence like this, and I thought it was a creative way of conveying the fact that yes, these “losers” are, in fact, invincible, and yes, we’re operating in a world where the normal rules of gravity and logic don’t quite apply. They are the heroes, these are their stories, and this is an action film…a very good action film.
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I know there’s been much discussion about which Losers this Losers is referring to. I’ve been told this movie is the latest incarnation of the franchise, which shifts the action to the present, and reveals the villains as not enemy-combatants on the field of battle but white-collar criminals high up in the federal government. In the original version of the comics, our heroes where “losers” because they were war heroes who had lost men under their command. In this version, they are losers because they’ve been abandoned by their government altogether, reduced to your average Joes. They are just like you and me, screwed over by the halls of power. It’s a cynical twist – but it’s this cynicism that goes a long way towards making The Losers work. It’s really an anti-government story, with patriots trying to fight their way back in from the outside. To destroy their government to save their country. And in this way, the movie takes on the same outsider POV as something like The Bourne Identity, gaining traction because we’re always in danger, always on the outside looking in, always trying to find the real answers as to why Max (Jason Patric) betrayed these soldiers and left them for dead.
This urgent race for answers gives the film momentum, and it’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana and Chris Evans who give the thrills personality. Patric, as Max, is a beautifully efficient corporatized villain. He is somehow connected to the CIA, but he strikes me more as a banker, manipulating toxic assets with a fiendish grin. He’s always in a suit, always thinking of world domination as a business strategy, wielding a gun not as a weapon but as a means of eliminating complications. When an assistant, carrying an umbrella to shield Max from the sun on the beach, accidentally stumbles when a gust of wind comes in off the ocean, Max kills her on the spot. It’s not that he’s evil; he’s just punishing unprofessionalism.
The syrupy-voiced Morgan, who I thoroughly enjoyed as the maniacal Comedian in Watchmen, brings the same sort of twitchy edge to Clay. Here’s a guy who’s unfailingly confident in his command of his renegades, but secretly haunted by the fact that he’s been double-crossed by Max and forced to go rogue. Chris “Captain America” Evans, as Jensen, is the comic relief who actually succeeds in generating a couple chuckles. I know there may be some who think he’s mugging a little too much for the camera, but when he suits up as a bicycle messenger to go hack into Max’s computer system, I thought it was a funny spoof of the realm of Mission: Impossible. Jensen looks so out of place, he barges in so obviously, that he must know he’s going to get busted. In fact, I think he’s counting on it, just so he can relish the moment when he must call on the snipers. As far as he’s concerned: A little less conversation, a little more action.
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And then there’s Zoe Saldana. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe – the woman I will henceforth refer to as Hot Z, who steals the show just as she has in Star Trek and Avatar, coming in a close second as the fiercest female assassin of 2010 (right behind Hit-Girl). She karate kicks her way into the movie, pummeling Clay with feet and fists, before pummeling him in a far different manner. She veers from firecracker to ally to girlfriend to femme fatale – and we follow her every step of the way.
The whole thing feels like The A-Team, if the A-listers were a little bit more personable, and their missions involved not only a cool van but also a helicopter descending into Miami, to latch on to an armored truck with a giant magnet, or a sprawling shootout at the port of Los Angeles. This isn’t tragedy or timely drama. It’s not the most memorable comic-to-film conversion, nor the most inventive.
It’s a serviceable plot, with brilliantly-staged and uber-creative battle sequences, and above-average personality. At a time when so many franchises seem so eager to sneer, brood, or play serious, I’m okay with this balancing act. This is mindless fun. But emphasis on the latter.
GRADE: B
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