Review: The Losers

The Losers is the story of an elite military outfit framed for the murder of a terrorist and the innocent children that were currently with him. After being presumed dead, the group meet up with Aisha, an unknown operative, who has special information on the man who framed them: Max. The group travel back to America to take down Max, a rogue CIA operative bent on starting a new World War.

It is pretty much your average PG-13 revenge flick. And as with most PG-13 revenge flicks, the protagonists are much more charismatic and likable than in their R-rated counterparts, where they are usually troubled and intense. Casting actors such as Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, and Columbus Short make this much easier. The actors naturally have that kind of appeal the filmmakers are looking for. Zoe Saldana, Oscar Jaenada and Idris Elba bring a much needed intensity and melodrama to help balance out the rest of the cast. Fortunately, the strength of one trio is not the weakness of the other. Morgan, Evans, and Short are not without their moments of intensity and melodrama, and vice versa. It is set to be one of the year's best ensemble with such great chemistry that everything clicks. They perform admirably in their attempt at elevating the material, but it was never meant to be incredibly ambitious.

The story itself is glitzy and energetic. Of course, they take full advantage of slo-mos and speed-ups burying itself under action cliches. It has just enough over-the-top action sequences to entertain, yet not so much to roll eyes, except for the antagonist's ultimate weapon which made me sigh out loud. Max, played by Jason Patric, is a take' em or leave' em kind of antagonist. He seems to be channeling Gary Oldman circa Leon, but just never gets it right. He is certainly a familiar espionage villain. He has a big picture outlook and is looking to do good by doing bad. The only problem is he never seems very concerned with the "good" part. Except for a throwaway line explaining his motivations, he seems far more driven by his own sociopathic nature.

The Losers is a literal comic come to life on screen. Energetic, thrilling, light-hearted, and a little bit cheesy. It is lacking in a number of areas specifically with its writing, but it is bound to entertain.

6/10

Review: Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass is the story of Dave Lizewski, a mild-mannered highschool geek. His only escape from his mundane life are the stories he reads in his weekly comics. Eventually, Dave takes hold of his destiny and becomes one of the masked crime-fighters he admired for so long. Becoming Kick-Ass, he quickly gains much notoriety, but soon finds himself in way over his head. The film makes two promises: 1) to satirize the genre in a post-modern way and 2) to show what it would be like for real people to be superheroes. If fails at both.

The beginning scenes offer a lot in terms of satirizing the genre. It's self-reflective nature turns most of the contemporary elements on its head. Dave's evolution to hero is not driven by a specific traumatic event, but rather an unflinching desire to end suffering. It is an almost wholly unselfish act. In one scene where he is being mugged for the umpteenth time, he notices a by-stander ignoring the crime. He notes that anyone else would act the same way and that is a despicable thing. As the movie progresses it stops satirizing and begins spoofing by taking genre standards and making them outlandish and humorously juvenile.

The second promise, showing realistic heroes, is not an original premise. Watchmen. Unbreakable. The tv series "Heroes." Even Batman, all take a stab at it. It is a concept still yet to be fully realized in my opinion. At first, Kick-Ass is a very real superhero. He loses his first fight. In his second, he is beaten mercilessly, but he ends the fight tending to a wounded stranger and staring down three large muggers. It is an effectively dramatic scene. Unfortunately, with the introduction of Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, the film becomes a living cartoon throwing out all it original intentions and slowly fading into unjustifiable absurdity.

I'm not entirely sure what I expected. I hoped for a very Edgar Wright like movie that takes the genre very seriously, but can equally find the humor in it, rather a straight forward spoof. In the beginning, the intentions seem very clear. That direction was admirable and ambitious, but it only ever nears "good," settling on chasing its tail with genre cliches and overly zealous ridiculousness. For a realistic, post-modern look at superheroics, I would recommend Special or Defendor instead.

4/10