Live action, eh? Wonder how this plays out...
Following the ever growing trend of converting an idea from medium [books, comics, video games] to another [take a guess], Dark Castle Entertainment and Warner Brothers bring us a story about a military unit that was double-crossed, set-up to be killed, and must fight to clear their names. Wait... Didn't I watch 80's re-runs of a show like this?
Enter the Losers. We've got your run of the mill group of specialists here: communications and technology geek Jensen [Chris Evans], "long-range eliminations" guy Cougar [Óscar Jaenada], transportation and heavy weapons guru Pooch [Columbus Short], knife-happy demolitions and tactical expert Roque [Idris Elba], and Clay [Jeffrey Dean Morgan] as operations control. A fine list of actors, who are known for being fine actors [well, not sure about Óscar; i don't hit the Spanish film circuit that much], but it's the material that give them the short end of the proverbial stick. It was really hard for me to go along with the character development and plot, or lack thereof. Now, don't get me wrong; I understand that this film is the very definition of an action flick. But I've seen dozens of action films where I actually gave a damn about what was going on. Here? Not even an inkling. The only thing I consistently enjoyed throughout the flick was Jensen's dialog and antics, but I think that it had more to do with Chris Evans' natural ability to be humorous and charismatic. There were moments where I chuckled at quirky quips said by other members of the cast, but Evans easily stole every scene he was in.
The lead antagonist is a fellow named Max [Jason Patric] who is the very definition of a villain. Hell, he shot his assistant because a strong gust of wind caught the umbrella she was holding to shade him on the beach causing her to momentarily lose control of it. He gets some sun on him when he doesn't want it so he kills her. Really?! This is the same guy who tries to have the Losers killed because they refused to kill a school bus full of children. Fu-uck off. We get it! He's bloody evil! Sheesh... There's another antagonist, kind of, that shows up in the form of a 100 lb mocha vixen named Aisha [Zoe Saldana] who's background is... relatively unknown. She's fighting them but helping them but... not... I don't know. She's kind of sexy, though.
How many times can we exploit slow motion?
After sitting through this, I honestly think the Director [or Writer or Producer or Random Idiot] thought the tag to image above. You know those scenes in a cliché action flick where the hero walks toward the camera in slow motion? There's about half a dozen of those. Not to mention several more scenes with unnecessary use of said prolonged scene durations. Most of the action scenes were pretty well done, though, so I have to give it to them for keeping me somewhat entertained; however, those few other occurrences that took it a bit too far did it glaringly so. There was an implementation of the locales via comic book-esque written on the environment that was unique, but kind of unnecessary. They kept pushing that this was adapted from a comic series, but all they did was a mash-up of interesting scenes from that story, and fluffed it with random bullshit. If you're going to push the comic aspect, stay true to the damn source material.
The Losers was a mediocre action film that had some laughs, but nothing spectacular. You won't be too disappointed if you rent it, but there's no reason for you to pay more to see it in theaters. Not even at Matinee prices.
I hope The A-Team doesn't disappoint like this did.
RATING:
rock hard. live harder. o_O
0 Reviews of My Review:
Post a Comment