Base unit, this is Pen Man. I got Bravo Uniform Lima Lima Charlie Romeo Alpha Papa in my sights, permission to engage? Roger. Wilco. Let’s party.
“The Losers” are a squad of military experts direct from Dumb Ops who, while taking out a drug lord, discover that instead they’ve been targeted for elimination by their never-seen boss, Max.
Assumed dead after the raid, this dirty not-quite-half-dozen swears revenge on Max. The movie, based on a comic book, features a couple of actors who deserve better (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba) and some who deserve even worse (like Chris Evans).
Morgan, Elba and Evans play team leader Clay, knife-wielding Roque and systems geek Jensen. They’re three sweaty stalwarts who join fellow team members Pooch and Cougar (there’s a 1987 buddy-movie title for you).
The mission: to drop idiotic one-liners and blow up stuff so unconvincingly that the characters often look like they’re walking in front of drive-in-size screens upon which the digital artists have scribbled orange detonation clouds.
The movie is coy about shielding the face of the treacherous Max, gradually building up to the moment when it can at last reveal the familiar features of . . . Jason Patric? Even when Patric was a star, he wasn’t a star.
Patric’s Max has a vague plan to destroy the world and/or collect $1 billion, or roughly the amount of money Patric would need to spend on acting lessons to have a hope of resurrecting his career.
Zoe Saldana plays a femme banale who joins forces with Clay’s crew. After picking up Clay in a bar in Bolivia, they almost kill each other in a fight that concludes when a brief chat reveals they’re actually both sworn to kill Max. So never mind.
She’s got a history of bad trouble. “Pretty much everyone with the exception of PETA wants this chick amscrayed,” we hear. Pig Latin! What’s next? Knock-knock jokes? Other classic lines include, “That’s right, bitches — I got a crossbow!” and “Let’s just say . . . he’s a bad man.”
Clay (who appears to own only one suit) stands perfectly still on a runway between two speeding assassins — because, I guess, he knows he’s a character in a movie and needs to look cool. A scary world-domination firm (“Goliath”) is so loose with its secrets that anyone dressed like an I.T. guy can stroll into an unlocked office and download top-secret data. Guys who are outnumbered and handcuffed can easily overpower their armed captors — because the villains are easily distracted.
Even the superweapons — “snooks”? — are, like the dialogue, silly without being funny. They’re green bombs that delicately implode large areas without pollution. Lots of carbon-emitting life forms wiped out and zero emissions? Maybe Max is an underappreciated Savior.
This movie — G.I. Joke, The D-Team — tries to do so little, and yet falls so short. A clue comes when the girl asks Clay, “How’s your steak?” and he replies, “Meaty.” Simple enough to achieve in theory, but this would-be treat for cinematic carnivores is a sawdust sandwich.