While watching The Losers I couldn’t escape two thoughts 1) Poor A-Team Movie and 2) As much as I love Chris Evans, he just isn’t right for Captain America. The Losers is based on a DC/Vertigo comic book series that came out last year (available in 5 trade paperbacks) about a Special Forces group that was betrayed by their country. In my head the A-Team theme music just went off. If you can find them, they will help you. And if you go see The Losers you will have a good time.
I really don’t have a lot to say about this movie other than it’s fun without being very innovative. Director Sylvain White (who did Stomp the Yard and a Direct to Video sequel to one of the I Know What You Did horror movies) tried to get fancy and stylized in the beginning of the movie and I found those parts distracting. He introduced his characters by giving them names and then freeze framing them with a quick shot of comic book style graphic art and whenever they went to a new location he would superimpose the name over a location. He certainly tried to put his stamp on this movie.
The cast is uniformly good; I wouldn’t say great, but solid. Jeffrey Dean Morgan played Clay the team’s planner whose plans never seem to come together, Chris Evans was Jensen the team funny man and communications specialist, Columbus Short was Pooch the team driver, Óscar Jaenada – Cougar was the team’s sniper and Idris Elba was Rogue – not sure what his role was which should have clued me in to the twist ending. After the team gets disavowed they meet up with Zoe Saldana‘s Aiesha who gives the team a chance to get revenge against the CIA guy, Max played with wonderful tongue and cheek glee by Jason Patric.
Evans and Patric steal the show with their ongoing humor, although there were times when it seemed obvious that Jensen was meant to be the comic relief. Like I said this is a by the numbers affair done with style, I’m down for the inevitable sequel, the problem with this movie is, it’s ruined me for the A-Team movie – not that I particularly wanted to see that movie to begin with, I walked into this expecting to hate it because it’s such a blatant rip off and I came away having thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Final Grade B
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 04.24.2010