Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Quick Look: THE LOSERS

The Losers is the KFC Double Down of action movies. It’s dumb, impractical, greasy, and messy. It’s also sporadically fun to look at, even if it’s never a particularly compelling or necessary experience. Director Sylvain White gives his men-on-a-mission actioner some style, bathing the screen in inky primary colors, but ultimately can’t keep the film enjoyable or entertaining. It’s forgettable. I found moments enjoyable, but I would find myself quickly drifting off into boredom. As the villain, Jason Patric has some underutilized charisma, but it’s unfortunate that, combined, the entire team assembled to take him down (including Zoe Saldana, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, and Chris Evans) can’t scrape up the same modest level of personality. Of course, no one involved is helped by being forced to speak the truly awful would-be banter credited to Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt. The fast pace and sporadically enjoyable style is no match for the thuddingly dumb and unceasingly sloppy screenplay. The elements for a fun action flick are here, but, just as the Double Down could sure use less chicken and more bread, the movie needed more rewrites before filming to be less bad.

No comments:

Post a Comment