The Losers

A hopelessly bland actioner, The Losers follows a ragtag team of former special-ops soldiers (Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Clay, Idris Elba’s Roque, Chris Evans’ Jensen, Columbus Short’s Pooch, and Oscar Jaenada’s Cougar) as they embark on a campaign of revenge against the sinister mastermind (Jason Patric’s Max) who left them for dead. Director Sylvain White has infused The Losers with an uninspired and downright incompetent visual sensibility that immediately establishes itself as the movie’s most problematic attribute, as the filmmaker’s reliance on eye-rollingly hackneyed stylistic elements (eg random instances of slow motion, shaky camerawork during fight scenes, etc) ultimately heightens the consistently generic nature of Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt’s screenplay. The ensuing atmosphere of by-the-numbers tedium effectively prevents the viewer from working up the slightest bit of interest in the title gang’s ongoing efforts, with the surprisingly talented cast primarily left floundering as they attempt to breathe life into their one-dimensional, sketchily-conceived characters (ie let’s get a moratorium going on wisecracking computer geeks, okay?) The absence of genuine thrills ensures that the action-packed climax is about as exciting as game of Trivial Pursuit, and it’s finally impossible to label The Losers as anything more than an aggressively middle-of-the-road revenge thriller (ie this is essentially the action equivalent of a Kate Hudson romcom).

** out of ****