"The Losers"

Action/Adventure, Thriller and Adaptation. Rated PG-13. 1 hour, 38 minutes.

Synopsis: Members of a CIA black ops team are left for dead and begin a search for the man who ordered their assassination.

Review: Stylized. It is obvious that this movie was adapted from a graphic novel. It has a lot of the same style, but none of the graphic violence. I’m not really sure why they went with a PG-13 rating.

Clay (Morgan) is leading a team of covert operatives on a mission in Bolivia. The mission goes sideways, and the five-man team is left for dead by the mission’s sponsor, ‘Max’.

While trying to earn enough money to regain entry to the United States, Clay meets Aisha (Zoe Saldana), a well-informed and well-financed local. She has an issue with the people responsible for Clay’s current predicament, and offers to help secure travel back to the United States as long as Clay and his team kill Max.

This isn’t a hard sell, with the exception of Clay’s right hand man, Roque (Elba). He is highly suspicious of Aisha’s intentions, but everyone wants out of Bolivia, so a deal is struck.

Once back in the US, the team locates Max and plans a kidnapping. This results in the first of many highly-explosive battles that fails to result in the spilling of very much blood. In fact, there are multiple scenes in which someone is executed (presumably) in a brutal fashion, but the action appears just off screen. With so much firepower and bravado on display, these sequences are somewhat of a letdown. It’s almost as if the viewer is being teased.

So, this film might be a primer for June’s The A-Team, a film adaptation of the beloved 80s TV show in which thousands of rounds were fired each episode but no one ever seemed to bleed. You can expect the same during The Losers.

Still, I liked it. The attitude, style and pacing kept me interested. There is violence, but it isn’t pictured onscreen. There is a small amount of sensuality, but you aren’t going to completely evade that when Zoe Saldana is involved. There is even a little humor, provided mostly by Chris Evans in a role as the team’s hacker/ electronics expert.

When I first started seeing trailers for this movie, I thought for certain it would be rated R. And after having seen the film, I’m still wondering why the producers went for the PG-13 rating. I can’t imagine that the film generated that much more box office revenue from the under 17 crowd.
If you can still catch a matinee showing of The Losers, you won’t be disappointed. Otherwise, catch it on cable in a couple of years – at least you’ll know they didn’t have to cut out much of it to get it ready for TV.

OVERALL RATING: C-

The Losers is now open in theaters nationwide.

Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

The Losers movie poster