The Losers: A Film Review

The Losers opens with a bang and keep on going. For true action fans, the flick is a fortune hunters treasure trove of rapid-fire music tracks meshed with action-packed sequences and funny comic-relief shots (including the bobbling head of a mini dashboard Chihuahua) cut in brisk Simpson-Bruckheimer fashion. For natural-born action aficionados like me, The Losers is the kind of feature film that gets your rocks off.

The plot reeks of G.I. Joe patriotism, as a quintet of happy-go-lucky Green Berets wipes out a band of Bolivian bandits and then saves 25 kidnapped kids discovered during the mission from a scheduled air strike. The situation heats up fast when the crack Special Forces team puts the rescued children on their own doomed chopper, which gets blown out of the sky immediately after take off. Double crossed and left for dead, the stage is set for the killing commandos to get some big payback. The result is a big-budget ride that puts a capital A in the action film genre.

The Losers is a talkie that walks the walk. Loaded with military toys, jets, missiles, and plenty of guerrillas with guns, it's a thrill ride that aims to please every electron in the cinematic synapses of action-hungry moviegoers everywhere. The film hits a bull's eye as an ultimate action fan turn on. Writers Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt have teamed up with director Sylvain White to create an entertaining tale of brutality, betrayal, and revenge with plenty of humorous scenes mixed into the kill, kill, kill theme that will surely keep on giving at the box office.

After our double-crossed assassins are sold down the river, they seem to settle in to a cushy expatriate life of drinking, cockfight betting, and riding around on sleek mopeds with hot Bolivian babes. What 2010 big action flick would be complete without some T&A to titillate the GI in every black ops wannabe paying the full box office price of admission?

But now I'm getting ahead of myself. First, enter the main hot chick, Zoe Saldana as Aisha, a hit lady who runs with the bad boys and likes it. It seems lady A wants some revenge of her own. What better way to get involved with the main swashbuckler, Clay, played to a pirate's "T" by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, than 1) pretend to seduce him, 2) try to join forces with him, and 3) erotically duke it out with him while his sleazy hotel room goes up in flames.

Clay and the mysterious femme fatale quickly kiss and make up, set a meeting, and then we cut to the scene of Clay's merry band of musketeers arriving on sporty scooters driven by their sexy girlfriends. Together with Aisha, the attractive pack of stabbed-in-the-back freedom fighters hatch a plan of retaliation and retribution against the powerful agency insider who betrayed them. It's formula-tested film making at its finest.

The rest of the movie is about the good guys, aka the losers, going after the main villain, Max, the crazy CIA kingpin behind the botched helicopter assassination of Clay and his men back in the South American jungle. Deftly played by a gracefully aging Jason Patrick, Max is the quintessential cloak and dagger creep gone mad in his own deranged world of power, murder, and mayhem.

With its big cast of quirky characters, scene after scene of plot-driven action and comedy sequences, and its commercially appealing cinematography and music soundtrack, The Losers is an action film that delivers on all levels. For true action film fanatics like me, it's a satisfying ride from start to finish.