The Losers - Cinema Review

'suffers from not having enough genuinely funny moments to call itself the action comedy it desperately wants to be'

Hollywood is in love with comic books. It's a well known fact. And with major properties like Batman and Spider-Man drawing in large grosses and even smaller ones like Iron Man easily rivaling the big boys, it's easy to see why the studios are infatuated. But even by the industry's skewed standards, The Losers is scraping the barrel.

In a run that lasted less than three years and only thirty-two issues, the comic books by Andy Diggle established a small, loyal fanbase and won limited praise from the industry awards. Which, in all likelihood, looks like more than the film will do, arriving in the UK after a pretty poor showing in the US and on an opening weekend which pits it against Sex And The City 2 and Prince Of Persia.

That's not to say though that director Sylvain White hasn't tried to craft something worthy of acclaim out of the source material. The production values here are high and some stylish editing and cinematography, which successfully crams the entire gang onto the same screen at every possible moment and sets the frame rate in time to whatever music happens to be playing, is both noticeable and welcome.

The cast too are likable, attractive and generally well-suited to the jokey-action shtick they're compelled to produce. Jeffery Dean Morgan is sharp and charming as the group's leader and although I never bought in to his conflict with second-in-command Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana provides a viable alternative to argue against. Columbus Short and Óscar Jaenada do little but facilitate everyone else and the main laughs are left to Chris Evans who excels in an office break-in scene.

That scene though was the only time I found myself laughing out loud and the movie as a whole suffers from not having enough genuinely funny moments to call itself the action comedy it desperately wants to be. One-liners don't fire and opportunities are missed (a character moaning about being shot in both legs could have been so much funnier) and the most that every scene other than the Evans' break-in scene raised was a wry smile.

Come the conclusion, White backs The Losers in to a bit of a corner and is faced with a difficult decision; wrap everything up into a neat bundle and extend the film with a ten minute coda or leave it a little bit open with one eye on the sequel. Neither would be entirely satisfactory and on balance, White probably picks the weaker option summing up a film that, whilst fun and more than its constituent parts, is really a rather flaky and distinctly minor comic book adaptation.

Look further...

'A predictable comic book adaptation that is fun, cool but ultimately a little bit disappointing' - F'n TV, 3 and 1/2 out of 5