Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
4/24/10
We're
just closing up shop on the first third of 2010, but a look at the trailers
for coming releases tells me that the action franchises of 80's television
are going to be one of the year's big themes. MacGruber will
spoof can-do icon MacGyver, The A-Team will get their own
big-screen vehicle, and as a warm-up, we get a quasi-A-Team (the B-Team?)
in the form of Vertigo Comics heroes The Losers. Sylvain White's
slam-bang, quip-a-minute flick has the right jokey, “blowing stuff up is
fun!” tone, and his team is filled with guys like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and
Chris Evans who specialize in macho cool while Jason Patrick's villain
is in a demented league of his own. The Losers leans a little
too hard on its TV groove, frustratingly unclear about the differences
between a would-be franchise-launcher and a TV pilot, and like most TV
tough guys, isn't exactly sure how to behave when there's a girl (a game
Zoe Saldana) around. But as spring action escapism, it packs a big
punch. And some really big guns. And a few mighty big explosions.
And, yeah, there's a bomb that melts islands. But we'll get to that
part later.
The
Losers (the branding comes only from the press materials, the group has
no official name in the dialog) are an elite military unit of high-functioning
eccentrics. Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) leads a group that includes
tech guy Jensen (Chris Evans), transportation wiz Pooch (Columbus Short),
marksman Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and demolitions specialist Rogue (Idris
Elba). They're assigned to mark the compound of a drug lord in Bolivia
for an airstrike, but try to abort when they see dozens of kids inside.
A mysterious voice appears on their coms, identifying itself as Max (Jason
Patrick), and informs them that the bombing will go on as scheduled.
Not only that, but when they rescue the kids before the airstrike and give
up their seats on the airlift home, that helicopter is shot out of the
sky on Max's orders. Now the Losers are fugitives, believed dead
by their superiors, including the mysterious Max. But a couple months
into a Bolivian exile, Aisha (Zoe Saldana) picks Clay up in a bar, and
the resulting conversation both burns his hotel down and gives him a shot
at payback. She'll smuggle the gang back into the US, where she's
got a lead on where they can find, and kill, Max. Meanwhile, the
government-sanctioned supervillain's been living large, traveling the world
with his right-hand Wade (Holt McCallany) buying up outrageous technologies
to help arm the world's terrorists. Two hidden agendas in his own
ranks, a boatload of mercenaries and a couple nukes stand between Clay
and a shot at the vengeance he seeks: it's not easy being a Loser.
While
it takes pains to express that its source material is a graphic novel,
The Losers owes its greatest debt to a byegone day of male bonding,
fun loving TV action adventure. Our heroes love violence beyond all
measure, but would never dream of hurting someone who wasn't bad and use
more tranquilizers than the staff of the National Zoo. The script,
started by Peter Berg at a time when he'd hoped to direct and finished
by James Vanderbilt, is low on point-to-point plot but high on both logistical
and dialog cleverness. The characters are jam-packed with eccentricity,
none moreso than Jensen, who's a hacker, a would-be Faceman who's always
kicking himself when his attempts to lay on the charm aren't as clever
as he'd hoped, the biggest fan of his niece's soccer team, and a motormouth
always wandering off on strange conversational tangents. Evans adds
a dusting of nerd to his charismatic core and pulls off a wonderfully memorable
character. Morgan is delightful when Clay is sticking to action hero
cool, although neither he nor the movie quite knows what to do with a relationship
between he and Aisha that swings back and forth between passionate love
and homicidal rage. Short is Hollywood's emerging master of “I need
to get home to my family” action heroes and nails that role here again.
But
the guy you'll remember most is Patrick. His Max is a regular multinational
corporation of evil, and every time we see him, he's hip-deep in a totally
different mad project. There's that island-melting weapon I mentioned
(a gloriously superfluous special effect that never pops up again after
its initial mention), a plan to hire a dozen anti-Loser assassins he follows
up simply by ordering the killers themselves murdered, and several random
bouts of homicidal madness too amusing to spoil. And as good as the
script is to him, Patrick is just as good back, creating an unforgettably
fussy evil genius who's forever irritated that the world can't read his
mind. His interplay with McCallany is priceless: the underling's
most important skill seems to be that he can stand Max enough to implement
his evil schemes. Patrick's every moment on-screen is a delight.
Which
brings us to the one thing that left me kinda cold about The Losers:
I know it covers (and that loosly) the first six of the 32 issues of its
comic source. I know it dreams of being the first in a series of
Losers flicks. But is that any excuse for how utterly anticlimactic
the climax is? The vibe is 100% that of a TV pilot, where we're to
be satisfied simply to have seen the pieces placed upon the board and to
now be jazzed up to tune in again and again to see how they'll move.
This narrative strategy annoys me enough when we're watching a can't-miss
pre-sold blockbuster, and this ain't that. The chances of a Losers
2 are a crapshoot at best, and to act as though there's no chance this
is the only adventure of these characters we'll ever see is somewhere between
hubris and idiocy.
But
what you do get is a lot of fun, with high spirits, laughs aplenty, and
a whole lot of violence at a pretty much perfect PG-13 pitch. The
Losers may or may not launch that franchise it thinks is in the bag,
but it will put a lot of smiles on a lot of faces, especially those that
grew up on another elite team of disgraced commandos who'll be trying to
launch a franchise come June. My advice to the A-Team? Don't
show up at a theater near me without an ending. Otherwise, The
Losers sets a nice bar for their bigger-budget competition to challenge. |
