The Losers: Movie Review

I was looking forward to seeing this graphic novel to movie adaptation... unfortunately; the critics don't lie when they say The Losers doesn't live up to the hype.  The first problem is the casting.  Oscar Jaenada, who plays Cougar, looks too much like Justin Long faking a bad Spanish accent; Zoe Saldana, while gorgeous in other films, looks like a cheap two-dollar whore; and Jeffrey Dean Morgan? Well I haven't forgiven him as an actor since he played the dead ghost of Denny who wouldn't go away on Grey's Anatomy.  And the rest of the supporting cast including the ever-talented Idris Elba, Chris Evans, and Jason Patric just fall flat; and it could be in part to the script, the directing, a combination or just a lack of enthusiasm for this film.  It was obviously just a paycheck for the actors in the film who walked through it worse than John Cusack did in 2012.

The story behind The Losers is about a band of soldiers get betrayed by a rogue agent in the CIA and have to fake their own deaths so as not to be the subject of an international hunt.  They in turn meet Aisha, played by Zoe Saldana, who miraculously knows about everything that's happened to them and how they can catch up to Max (Jason Patric) the rogue agent who betrayed them.  The weak story is complimented by a series of pitiful stop-action fight sequences that at times are non-sensical and at other times bordering on pathetically choreographed.  The worst part about this pathetic movie was that the ending was very unsatisfying as the studio definitely tried to set it up for a sequel; which we can all pray will never happen.

Director Sylvain White's claim to fame; if you want to call it that is Stomp the Yard; yet he seems to be on tap to direct a remake to Ronin. I daresay we minimize White's budgets so we don't get mainstream films like The Losers that look to be promising and yet end up boring us to tears. I was hoping for so much more from writers James Vanderbilt and Peter Berg.  Vanderbilt was the genius behind the great story Basic, and the enjoyable Zodiac and The Rundown so I was hoping for something fantastic with The Losers but the story was definitely a disjointed mess of crappy dialogue and horrible plot developments.

This movie isn't worth the 95 minute run-time that it is.

Definitely add it to your skip-pile.

1 out of 5 stars