Not Quite Winners

To say that I’m a fan of The Losers graphic novels would be a huge understatement. I started collecting the five collected graphic novels back in 2004, way before there were even rumors of a movie. I liked the comic because it talked about a special forces team that was wronged and were trying to get revenge. It felt like a cross between Three Kings and Ocean’s Eleven. Thus, I had quite high expectations for the film adaptation.

Sent to the Bolivian jungle by the US government to hunt and kill a target, the team known as The Losers changes their mission parameters when they see some anomalies. Speaking to a mysterious voice known only as “Max” (Jason Patric), The Losers are left for dead. Col. Franklin Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) convinces his team that they can get their revenge on Max while the rest of the world thinks they’re dead. Joined by the enigmatic Aisha (Zoe Saldana) Clay’s team plots a way to get back to the US while exacting justice on the man who wanted them dead.

For me, the best part about The Losers is seeing the team come to life on the big screen. I liked the casting for the most part, particularly for Clay, Aisha, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and especially Jensen (Chris Evans). They looked and felt exactly how they did in the source material. Though Columbus Short was good as Pooch, the comics kind of portrayed him as an older man. Idris Elba also gave a credible performance as Roque even though he was a white man in the comics.

My first problem with this movie is the casting of Jason Patric as Max. The main villain of the comics is kept a mystery for so long that his ultimate revelation was a major event there. In this film though, we’re introduced to Max fairly early and he’s nothing like I expected him to be. Patric plays him as an over-the-top villain with no redeeming qualities and it often seemed like he was trying too hard in the role. It didn’t help that his dialogue often sucked.

Another glaring problem with The Losers is that it was often bogged down by bad pacing. Just when you think things are picking up and the action is about to go non-stop, there are moments when everything slows down in favor of dialogue when it isn’t really necessary. Those scenes could have been done in a way that the quick pace of the movie could have been maintained, but director Sylvain White didn’t do so.

There are definitely scenes in the film that were great to see since they came straight out of the comics. The characterizations of Jensen, Cougar, and Pooch, as well as the team’s relationships with one another made the characters likeable enough, it’s just that the deficiencies were just too glaring to make The Losers into a real winner.