The Losers (2010 film)

The Losers
A group of six looking down from above, with the word "Losers" in the center. Theatrical poster.
Directed by	Sylvain White
Screenplay by	Peter Berg James Vanderbilt
Story by	Andy Diggle (comic book)
Produced by	Joel Silver Akiva Goldsman Kerry Foster
Starring	Jeffrey Dean Morgan Zoe Saldana Chris Evans Idris Elba Columbus Short Óscar Jaenada Jason Patric Holt McCallany Peter Macdissi
Cinematography	Scott Kevan
Edited by	David Checel
Music by	John Ottman
Production companies	DC Entertainment Dark Castle Entertainment Weed Road Pictures Warner Bros. Pictures
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date	April 23, 2010 (2010-04-23)
Running time	103 minutes
Country	Template:FilmUS
Language	English
Budget	$25 million
Box office	$29,170,077

The Losers is a 2010 American action film adaptation of Vertigo comic book series of the same name by Andy Diggle. Directed by Sylvain White, the film features an ensemble cast that includes Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana and Chris Evans.

The film received mixed or average reviews from critics and drew comparisons to The A-Team, a remake of which was released shortly after The Losers premiered.

Plot

Clay, Jensen, Roque, Pooch and Cougar are members of an elite United States Special Forces team sent into the Bolivian jungle on a search-and-destroy mission. Upon painting their target for an air strike, Cougar spots children being moved into the camp. Their attempts at aborting the strike are met with resistance, and upon destruction of the targeting equipment it's revealed that "command" is "Max," and he has no intention of aborting. Against orders, Clay moves the team into the compound (target site) to rescue the children, finding all but one. Clay finds the last child guarded by the prime target (the prime reason for the air strike), whom Clay shoots as the man attempts to reach for the knife that he had previously dropped. The team then escape the compound with the children via school bus, narrowly escaping the blast zone. Reaching the original pickup location, Clay opts to airlift the children out of the area instead of the team. But Max, believing the team to be onboard the helicopter, orders it destroyed.

Presumed dead, the team is stranded in Bolivia, where they are contacted by Aisha, a woman who knows how to get to Max and who offers to help them as long as they make sure he dies. After the team agrees to what Aisha describes as a "essentially a suicide mission," Aisha smuggles them into the United States. Aisha reveals Max will travel via armored convoy in Miami, and the team hijacks a helicopter to use in kidnapping him. The mission proceeds as planned, but Pooch is made out by Wade, head of security for Max. However, it is revealed that the convoy was not carrying Max himself but contained a hard drive belonging to him. A hard drive Jensen cannot crack, as it is encrypted.

In Dubai, Max meets with clients who are having "moral issues" with Max's plans. After rough negotiating, they agree to help. Max intends to purchase an environmentally friendly bomb called a snuke, with the power equivalent to a nuclear weapon but with no fall-out, and intends to sell it to whoever plans to use them rather than simply hold them as deterrents.

Clay and the team find the encryption key to the hard drive is held by at Goliath Worldwide Headquarters (multinational "manufacturer of everything"). Jensen breaks in disguised as a courier and tech support to steal the algorithm to crack the hard drive. Barely making it out, Jensen cracks it and finds that the hard drive is a "courier drive" with information ($400 million in Max's money) that can only be extracted at certain locations. A record is found on the drive of every location it's been plugged into, the most hooked-up location being in the Port of L.A., which the team assumes is Max's home base.

Max's clients procure his weapons, but as it is a "difficult" process, they raise the price of the exchange. Max realizes he cannot get the funds, but knows he can trick Clay and the team into doing it for them.

Upon further examination of the hard drive, Jensen discovers the $400 million wasn't originally Max's but belonged to the man Clay shot in Bolivia, who originally intended the money to go to his daughter, Aisha. The team rushes to warn Clay, but Aisha escapes after shooting Jensen in the arm. Knowing Aisha could ruin them, Clay and the team decide to hit Max's building in the Port of L.A. They infiltrate the location, but as the team gets into position they are systematically captured, with Clay being knocked out by Roque.

Roque, being dismayed with not capturing Max in Miami, had contacted Wade to make a deal: he turns over the team and gets to walk. While Clay is loaded into a van, he reveals that Roque betrayed them to the rest of the team, and the team is lined up to be executed, and Pooch is shot in both legs for his defiance. Moments before being shot, Cougar spots Aisha upon a rooftop with an RPG. Firing the RPG, Aisha distracts the guards and allows Cougar and Jensen to disable them, moving Pooch to a safe location to be bandaged. Meeting up with Aisha, Clay is forced to reveal that he shot her father. She states that after they kill Max, they're going to finish their business.

Roque, seeing the team has escaped, attempts to hijack Max's plane and his money. Clay catches and fights Roque while the team chases Max. Wade, seeing Roque attempt to leave with the plane, chases after him on a Ducati motorcycle, but Cougar shoots out the engine, launching Wade into the plane's engine and the bike into the cockpit, apparently killing Roque. Clay corners Max on top of a crane only to see that Max is holding a "dead man's switch" for an onsite activated Snuke. Max throws the switch off the crane into the water, forcing Clay to choose between killing Max and catching the switch. Clay dives into the water for the switch and manages to deactivate it. Max escapes and later calls Clay to gloat, but Clay points out that now he knows what Max looks like, and they'll be seeing him again.

Cast

• Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Franklin Clay. Morgan took the role of leader very seriously and was on set every day, even if he was not in the scene.
• Idris Elba as William Roque
• Zoe Saldana as Aisha al-Fadhil
• Chris Evans as Jake Jensen
• Columbus Short as Linwood "Pooch" Porteous
• Óscar Jaenada as Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez
• Jason Patric as Max
• Holt McCallany as Wade
• Peter Macdissi as Vikram

Production

Development

In 2007 it was announced that a movie adaptation is in development with a screenplay by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt, to be directed by Tim Story for Warner Bros. In October 2008 Variety reported that Sylvain White had now taken the director's chair, with Dark Castle Entertainment acting as the financiers.

In February 2009, it was reported that Jeffrey Dean Morgan would headline the upcoming adaptation playing Clay. In March 2009, it was confirmed that Columbus Short will play Pooch, Idris Elba will play Roque and Zoe Saldana will play Aisha, Chris Evans playing Jensen, and Óscar Jaenada playing Cougar. In August 2009, it was announced that Jason Patric will play Max.

Director explained how he worked closely with the creators of the comic book to recreate the visual tone of the story. The film adapts the first two volumes of the comic book, "Ante Up" and "Double Down" and tells the story in a more linear way than in the comic books. Elements of the story have been left out instead of trying to squeeze the whole story into one film and the director would like to tell the rest of the story if the film does well at the box office.

Filming

Filming for The Losers began in Miami, Florida and Puerto Rico in July 2009. Many of the movie's scenes were filmed in many of Miami's neighborhoods such as Brickell, Downtown Miami, Midtown Miami and South Beach. City scenes were shot in the Downtown Miami area, with driving scenes in the city filmed along Brickell Avenue and near the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

Filming in Puerto Rico included scenes at the Arecibo Observatory, Port of San Juan and the Milla de Oro area of Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.

Marketing

Promotional artwork for the film was released at Comic Con, the poster was drawn in the style of the comic book, and was later recreated photographically with the cast from the film and used as the theatrical release poster.

A four minute preview of the film was shown at WonderCon.

A special "double volume" collected edition graphic novel was released to tie in with the film adaptation collecting including the volumes Ante Up and Double Down. A second book to collect the rest of the series was also released.

Release

In June 2009, Warner Bros. set a tentative release date of April 9, 2010 for the film. The release date was subsequently pushed back to June 4, 2010, to avoid going up against Clash of the Titans also from Warner Bros. The trailer for the film was released online January 29, 2010, and was shown in theaters with Edge of Darkness. An official photo for the film was released online. The release date was subsequently moved up to April 23, 2010.

Reception

Critical response

The film has received mixed reviews. It holds an approval rating of 47% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 146 reviews, with a consensus stating The Losers is loud, fast, and unrelentingly violent, but it's also funny and well-acted, which will make all the difference for some action fans." Review aggregation website Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 44% based on 32 reviews from selected critics.

Roger Ebert gave the film 3 and a half stars, writing "The Losers knows what it's doing and how to do it. Sylvain White doesn't have a lot of credits but he knows how to direct and not trip over his own feet. The movie gets the job done, and the actors show a lot of confidence in occupying that tricky middle ground between controlled satire and comic overkill. It's fun." Cindy White of IGN gave the film 4/5

Michael Phillips writes "The movie is all revenge, all the time" but complains that the film is a lesser version of "The A-Team". Phillips gave the film 2 and 1/2 stars. Peter Debruge of Variety criticized the film as "the sort of the sort of pyro-heavy exercise parodied in Tropic Thunder. He notes that casting against type helps make the team more memorable but complains that despite the polished production the film is a offers only a hollow junk-food high. John Anderson describes the film as a good idea pushed to excess, and with all the freshness of last weeks salad bar. Scott Tobias of The AV Club complains about the lack of humility or self-deprecation in the heroes despite their title. He notes how the film tries so strenuously to be cool and describes the film as nothing more than style for its own sake. Kyle Smith of the New York Post lambasts the film giving it half a star out of 4. He describes Zoe Saldana as a femme banale, saying actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, deserved better and Chris Evans deserved worse. He dismisses the film as G.I. Joke, The D-Team, and says that even though the film tries to do so little, it still falls so short.

Phelim O'Neill of The Guardian newspaper gave the film 3 stars out of 5. He notes similarities to the A-Team and criticises the film for being full of action movie cliches. He praises the film for the lighter comedic touches, and overall describes it as big dumb fun. His colleague Philip French of The Observer described the film as being in "A-Team territory" with the action sequences being well enough put together but that it was all done far better in Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice.

Box office

The film played in 2,936 theaters and earned $9,406,348 on its opening weekend at the box office at #4. The film went on to earn $23.5 million in the United States and more than $5 million internationally for a worldwide total of over $28 million.

Home media

In the United States, the DVD release date for the film was July 20, 2010.

External links

• Official website
• The Losers at IMDb
• The Losers at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Losers at Metacritic
• The Losers at Box Office Mojo