THE LOSERS (Vague Spoilers)

Dir. Sylvian White US 2010

"If you want your life back, you're gonna have to steal it."

In some ways, this movie was a Bizarro antithesis to my experience with Kick-Ass. Kick-Ass was a movie I really dug, based on a comic I didn't like. The Losers was a movie I thought mostly failed, based on a comic I fucking love. I apologize in advance for most of this review consisting of "The comic did this way better because...". I promise I'll get to talking about the film on its own terms by the end of the review. Also, the quote at the top is kind of shitty, I apologize for that too. I couldn't think of one that thematically summed up the movie, so I just pulled a line from the trailer. ::lowers head in shame::

I first came across The Losers in 2003, in the form of an 8-page preview in the back of an issue of 100 Bullets. The art was killer and it was pretty damn violent, which was pretty much all 18-year old Steve needed to know before buying a comic. Over the course of its 32 issues, The Losers proved to be one of the most kinetic, compelling action comics I'd ever read. This is pretty high praise from a guy who reads a lot of comics that feature people kicking the shit out of each other with superpowers. The characters were archetypal, yet complex; the plot unpredictable, yet tightly plotted. Shortly after the series finished in 2006, DC announced that it had been optioned for film, an unsurprising turn of events given the explosion of cinematic comic book adaptations over the last decade. 'Perfect', I thought; 'If the action in the movie is half as badass as it is in the book, I'll be a winner.' Poor naive young Steve. How wrong you were...

I'll run through the plot quickly since the commercials for the movie don't really impart much other than, "Check out this flick we cranked out as fast as we could before the A-Team comes out!" The Losers are a five-man CIA wet works team on a routine mission in Bolivia. The job goes south (in a very tragic way) and a Keyser Söze-esque CIA handler known only by the codename Max orders their assassination. The Losers survive the attempt, although Max and the world at large believe them to be dead. Using their training, the element of surprise and the assistance of a mysterious woman named Aisha, The Losers set out to get revenge on Max and end up uncovering a vast conspiracy that threatens to destabilize the world's governments. Sounds pretty badass right? It totally is, at least in the comic.

The first major problem the film runs into, as is often the case with adaptations, is compression. The movie is 97 minutes long. The comic was 32 issues. The script crams the backstory of their first mission (which occurs over 5 issues midway through the comic) into the first 10 minutes of the film. The rest of the movie draws heavily from the first 6 issues of the comic. The movie ends with plenty of room for a sequel, but this abbreviated apprroach doesn't work in the film's favor (I maintain that the entire 32 issues could have been adapted into a single 2+ hour film, given an almost unrealistically high standard of scripting, pacing and budgetary allowances; not something a studio is going to invest in when adapting an under-the-radar comic). While revealing the backstory upfront made sense in terms of screenwriting, it seemed completely hollow compared to the way it was done in the comic. When the origin of The Losers is revealed in the book, the reader is already deeply invested in the characters and sees the brutal lengths to which they've gone to exact their revenge. This gives their reasons weight and pathos that was lacking in the film, where were are presented with a situation involving characters we don't know and a horrifying, bleak event which seems out of sync with the rest of the film. Compounding this, The Losers confrontation with Max, while not fully resolved in the film, is accelerated to provide a satisfying climax for the film and cuts short on the tension that is built in the book, where Max is not even seen for almost two dozen issues. Additionally, the globe-trotting pace of the comic (nearly every arc takes place in a different location around the world) is replicated here, but only serves to demonstrate how rushed the plotting is, rather than giving the story a global scope. I counted five short scenes in a row that jumped from location to location, complete with title cards (which I find irritating in most instances anyway; if the establishing shot shows a skyline with the Empire State Building, a title card reading 'New York City' is kind of insulting). This movie suffers just about every basic adaptation flaw you can think of.

With the plot so truncated, I was naturally worried that the characters I love so well would suffer similarly. The acting/character work managed to be the best part of the movie (with some glaring, Jason Patric-shaped exceptions), which I was expecting given fairly geek-eclectic cast that was assembled for this film.

Chris Evans (who will have 4 comic book characters under his belt by the time he plays Captain America next summer) steals the show as Jensen, the teams tech and comms expert. Jensen provides effective comic relief in the book, but despite the film having a much brighter tone overall, Evans still manages to garner laughs every time he opens his mouth. From his succession of increasingly hilarious t-shirts to the "shooting the guards with telekinetic fingers" scene they showed in all the trailers (the one stand-out sequence recreated faithfully and effectively from the comic), Jensen is the only character who I felt was improved in the film, a feat I mostly credit to Evans' boundless energy and consistently hilarious line deliveries.

Pooch (the driver) and Cougar (the sniper) were respectively played by Colombus Short and Oscar Jaenada, two actors I weren't familiar with going into the film. Cougar is a tough role to crack when translating from comic to film; in the book he barely speaks and his face is almost always hidden beneath the shadow of his hat brim. The writers wisely brightened the character up in the film while still retaining his intrinsic badassery, and Jaenada is more than serviceable in the part. My only major complaint was the loss of meaning behind his self-imposed vow of silence, revealed very powerfully during the origin story in the comic, but essentially glossed over in the film. Although Columbus Short is at least 10 years younger than Pooch is in the comic, he's able to convey the family-man nature of the character, despite one of his major character traits (his relationship with Clay) being transfered over to Roque.

Which brings me to the two actors I was most excited about going into the film: Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Clay (the team leader) and Idris Elba as Roque (his second-in-command). Although this is the closest I've ever seen him to playing a lead in anything, Morgan has built an impressive resume as a charming ass-kicker over the last few years, both as the sociopathic Comedian in the Watchmen film and as John Winchester, the demon-hunting father of the protagonists on CW's Supernatural (yes, there is a show about two brothers who hunt demons on the CW, and yes, it is awesome). If Spielberg ever decides to reboot Indiana Jones with another actor (he won't), JDM would be my top pick. Unfortunately for him, the script turns Clay from the uncompromising, no-nonsense hardass he was in the book to a fairly cliched, remorseful brooder with a penchant for fucking the wrong women. Morgan doesn't seem capable of turning in a bad performance, but he's essentially playing a PG-13 version of a character that needs to be R (a problem that kind of plagues the entire film). Even more watered down is Idris Elba, who I became a massive fan of after seeing him as Stringer Bell, the cool, calculating drug kingpin on The Wire. In the comic, Roque is just a mean motherfucker, straight up. No remorse, no compassion, no real kinship with his teammates beyond doing what's necessary to get the job done. The screenwriters made the rather obvious move of building up a close friendship between Clay and Roque, for the admittedly fair reason that friction between a leader and his No. 2 always makes for decent drama, as well as adding a bit of a punch to one of the third act twists. The screenwriters taking the easy way out aside, Elba doesn't seem nearly as invested in his role as many of the other actors do and it shows, especially during the numerous scenes where Roque pulls out the over-confident tough guy act. It's a shame that he never is able to pull that off convincingly, especially when he conveyed so much menace through so little action on The Wire.

The two biggest character casualties end up being Aisha (the mysterious wild card) and Max. Aisha is played by Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek and like 900 other movies that came out in the last twelve months), who brings a genuine spark to everything she does, which is appreciated considering she could easily coast on her (absurdly good) looks. Unfortunately, the movie version of Aisha belongs on Sesame Street when compared to the comic incarnation of the character. In the comic, Aisha is a vicious, unrepentant killer who can barely bring herself to display normal human empathy. She sports a necklace of human ears, spent her childhood slitting the throats of wounded enemy soldiers in the Soviet/Afghan wars and is generally terrifying. In the movie she's the typical badass chick with a heart of gold. Her relationship with Clay (barely present in the comic beyond some random rough sex) is inflated into the obligatory, but unnecessary love story in the film and her cutesy interaction with the other members of the team flies in the face of everything the character was in the comic. The fact that she is never explicitly stated to be an Afghan in the film (a major plot point in the book, as were the post-9/11 politics of the Middle East) speaks to the wider dumbing-down of the film as a whole from what it was. Keeping the characters eyebrow piercing isn't enough to make her a hardass. Sorry.

Unforgivably shitty is both the treatment and portrayal of Max by Jason Patric. Patric blew me away in Narc (a brutal 2002 undercover cop film by Joe Carnahan; check it out) so I was excited to see what he'd do with the character. Sadly, in terms of the narrative and his portrayal of the character, Patric seems to be inhabiting a completely different movie, possibly a Roger Moore-era James Bond film. He minces about, making hammy jokes to his henchmen and killing them at random when they displease him. At no point is he ever threatening or believable as a villain. And the less said about his ridiculous "snuke" plan, the better. It's clear that Jason Patric was having fun with the role, and his comedic timing is admirable, it just feels completely out of place given the character.

I said I would discuss the film on its own merits at some point right? Ok, that can be now. When given a lackluster script and pretty decent overall cast, it would generally fall to the director to bring everything together into worthy final product. I cringed a bit when Sylvian White was announced as director, given that his first and only other director credit was for Stomp The Yard. While White displays a clear enthusiasm for the action genre with this film, it suffers from a few major rookie mistakes. The action itself is a hodge-podge of techniques cribbed from the last decade of action films. You've got your slow motion, your tightly shot Jason Bourne fights, a bit of shaky-cam and art from the comic super-imposed over a few scenes. The tone of the action generally sets the tone of the action movie and although I'd ultimately end up placing this one in the flashy, over the top category, White never really commits to one style and ends up leaving everything feeling trite and uninspired. Although the story is a bit larger than life, I think the action would have felt a bit more grounded and vital if they had gone the way of the Bourne films rather than trying to make everything so cartoony (This movie really needed an R rating).

One final point I wanted to make was regarding the music. Usually the soundtrack remains in the background for me when I watch a movie, unless it's really great or really terrible. In this film it was just strange. The super-villain 'DUN DUN DUNNNN' cues used in Max's scenes made that character seem all the more ridiculous, but the strangest choice was the song they used for scene when Clay and Aisha first meet and fight. Not only was the song out of place and annoying, the used the EXACT SAME SONG for their sex scene later. I will, however give credit where credit is due and say that the movie makes excellent use of Jensen singing 'Don't Stop Believin' in what's probably the funniest scene in the movie.

I probably don't need to warn anyone away from this movie. Given that it made less than $10 million on its opening weekend, I'm sure that Warner Bros. already considers it a flop and it'll probably be pulled from theatres as soon as the summer movie season begins next week. I mostly find it sad that most people will remember this movie as 'that lame looking A-Team rip-off', if they remember it at all. If you were thinking about seeing this movie, I'd recommend going the extra dollar or two and picking up the newly released graphic novel instead. This book contains the first 12 issues of the comic, which is about twice the plot you get in the movie. If you're even remotely into comics, I can basically guarantee it will be worth your while.