The Losers (2010)

Elevator Pitch: The Losers are a bunch of US special forces guys, who get involved in a doubtful enterprise in Bolivia, which results in the death of a drug lord, and a helicopter full of children. They are forced to discard their identities and live off the grid in South America, but are targeted by the daughter of the drug lord who takes them on. But they all find that they were scammed by “Max” as super villain, and so they all get together to take him on, returning to America where he has a deal cooking. But can the group trust all their members?

Content: There is some non-revelatory and unconvincing sex, plus some drinking of shorts in grimy bars. The group, who in the first few minutes have their skills assigned, in the way of the “A Team”, spot the drug lord’s complex for a missile strike. Later Clay, the team leader and Aisha, who turns out to be the drug lord’s daughter, alternately fight and f**k, and for a while it is difficult to understand why. We get a view of Max, their arch-enemy, who shows us how ruthless he is by shooting a female assistant who has failed to hold up his sun umbrella properly. Overall a lot of explosions and gunfire.

A View: I mostly just accept what is put before me except for failed logistics, and now, as it turns out, problems of physique. There is a lot of martial arts stuff, all involving Zoe Saldana, but come on, at the time of this movie she was a stick-insect. For even the most skilful hand to hand combat you need a bit of muscle. As for the rest of it, the actors seemed to be enjoying themselves, more than we enjoyed watching them. On the plus side, there was very artistic use of container stacks in the port of Los Angeles. As far as I know no-one has ever bothered to do that before, but unless you are a fan of container stacks probably choose some other shoot-em up. Life is too short to watch them all.

Additional Info:  At the beginning of the film when the team call in an aircraft the experts have determined that it is a MiG 21, the only country operating such aircraft in the Americas being Cuba, so it is probably archive footage.