Picoreview: The Losers: Good fun.
I kept seeing screenshots from The Losers on Tumblr, and commented on some funny bits and got into a discussion with one of my followers there and anyway it ended up with me having a copy of the movie and I finally got a chance to watch it last night.
It’s appallingly dude-heavy (there are, off the top of my head, only 3 speaking roles for females, one of whom is a little girl) but the dudes are very appealing: Idris Elba, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, and two with whom I was not previously familiar, Óscar Jaenada and Columbus Short (Jaenada is v. hot and Short is pleasantly attractive.), so, I mean, yeah, wow, talk about easy on the eyes.
Along with Zoe Saldana as the sole female part worth mentioning, they *do* get points for a main cast that sports four people of color and only two white guys, or an even split between POC and white guys if you include the two main bad guys.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to bring it to the wider attention of viewers, apparently, since it made less than no money. It’s a damn shame the film got made before Elba, Evans or Saldana became bigger names (JDM, much as I love him, is as big as he’s ever gonna get), because it’s actually pretty darn good and probably deserved a broader audience than it got. Chris Evans is very funny in it (and has the show-stealing scenes), and Idris Elba brings the ferocity in a very American accent.
Jason Patric was…deliberately awful as the bad guy. I mean, he went for it, full out evil billionaire, but what it mostly did was serve to highlight how utterly fantastic Holt McCallany was as his Lead Henchman. Which was okay, because McCallany really was wonderful. :)
A thing that I didn’t expect was that although it was violent, nearly all the violence took place between the frames, off screen, or in a deliberately (admirably, even) comic-book style which made it watchable from my perspective. I was relieved, actually, because I’d kind of thought it might be gonna be too bloody for me, but it wasn’t at all.
And there were actually plot twists I didn’t expect! Which was especially fun because I was live-commenting it at the Tumblr friend who brought it all to my attention, and I kept being like O NO THEY DIDN’T! I think she had as much fun as I did. :)
Anyway, yeah, an unexpectedly decent film. Will Watch Again!