When I sat down to watch Sylvain White’s big screen adaptation of the Andy Diggle and Jock comic book The Losers we were introduced to the film by Diggle and Jock themselves who told those present that they hadn’t seen the finished version and they would be enjoying it for the first time along with us.

I do wonder what they made of White’s film, as I made clear in my review I wasn’t too taken with it, and though it must have been pretty cool to see their characters, dialogue and set pieces the resulting adaptation is far more formulaic than its origins.

So, let’s go back to source here, as those taken with the film will no doubt chose to discover the comic book origin and Vertigo have obliged and released The Losers Volumes 1 & 2. Here’s the blurb,

With the eagerly anticipated Warner Bros. Pictures movie The Losers set to reach theaters in April 2010, DC Comics collects the first twelve issues of THE LOSERS — from the ANTE UP and DOUBLE DOWN TPs — into a single, explosive volume!

This collection introduces The Losers, formerly an elite U.S. Special Forces unit that served as the covert bloody hand of America until they stumbled across a C.I.A. secret they couldn’t ignore. The C.I.A. tried to kill them, but they’re about to learn that it takes more than one try to eliminate The Losers.

What leads us through the cliches of the story are the characters we find caught up in revenge mission, and they make an enjoyable collection on the page, there’s a flurry of banter and the explosive set pieces which are what separate the book from the film – the build up is greater on the page, while the execution is better on screen.

The story kicks off from the very first page, and the dark, kinetic artwork by Jock assists the pacing, explosions abound and wises are cracked – this is another example of where the cool guys walk away from the fireballs without thinking about looking back. The character of Aisha al-Fadhil, played by Zoe Saldana in the film is given a far better backstory in the comics, and the treatment of her character is one of the failings of the film, but in Andy Diggle’s work she is a far more mysterious and forceful character, and acts as a better counterpoint to the testosterone fuelled company of Losers.

The mystery of Max, virtually non-existent in the film, is an ongoing theme of the comic and at journey’s end his identity is not revealed, and there’s a few less cliches on offer here to make it worth your while if you’re a comic book fan.

Chances are that you won’t find any attempt at subversion in such a well worn idea, but the pace and set pieces make it a good read, even if you weren’t totally taken with the film.

The Losers Volumes 1 & 2 are published by Vertigo Books and are available now.

The Men on a Mission movie is big business this year with the big screen adaptation of the ultimate 80s property The A-Team rubbing musclebound shoulders with another nostalgia tinged action epic The Expendables, and this film, while it has the luxury of hitting our cinema first, needs to establish an identity of its own in order to offer up something other than playground quips and a succession of explosions.

The comic book roots of this film are evident in the standard character intros (including the time honoured freeze frame/slam/superimposed character name tack) and the bullet ballets with their sudden super slo-mo death scenes, and fans of the comic book will enjoy seeing some of the more stylised set pieces faithfully portrayed on screen. But we’re post Kick-Ass, and more imagination is needed to engage the audience and while the film offered plenty of style it suffers from a critical lack of substance.

Director Sylvain White knows when to adhere closely to the panels of the comic, and some of the scenes could have been storyboarded from the original from writer Andy Diggle and illustrator Jock, but White also allows the panel frames to be pushed a little wider and some of the more outlandish set pieces are given extra scope on screen.

Comparing this to something like 300, where the framing was sometimes a celluloid copy of the artwork, and also Watchmen, whose adherence to the source material was something of a sticking point for a lot of critics, The Losers does feel episodic and formulaic, just as the comic book did, but the same two things save it on the big screen.

The set pieces are fun to watch, and the first scene has a particularly nasty conclusion which I wasn’t expecting, and the various missions to recover/steal some very important plot device play out like Mission Impossible as commanded by Danny Ocean; the banter is frantic and fun, the gadgets look geeky, plenty of lock and load and gunplay ahoy. But it’s hard to engage in a film that seems so determined to impress with its hardware that it leaves the characters strewn across the screen hanging onto their sole trait (distrustful, vengeful, homesick, court jester, etc) like shadows in the light of the explosions they cause.

Never at any point of the film do we think our band of Losers will fail, and it becomes all about sitting back and enduring/enjoying the ride. Note that this does not mean ‘turning your brain off’ (seriously – you’d be dead), but more seeing the film for what it is: a series of explosions and fights with a lacing of plot to keep the momentum on some sort of track. It does what it sets out to do very well, and it’s a flashy spectacle which will play very well to those who can’t wait for The A-Team to come rolling around. I enjoyed the film while hating some parts of it intensely, and on further thought concluded that I was thinking about it all too much. It’s a ride, and you know what you’re in for within the first few minutes.

What is likely to endear you to the film far more than the plot is the cast. Virtually everyone in the film is seemingly perfect for their respective roles, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Idris Elba making great hay with their antagonistic relationship and Elba in particular really yanking his dialogue from the realms of cliche to be an effective, ambiguous presence. Zoe Saldana gets to look good and fire bazookas, sadly not much more than that, while Captain America himself Chris Evans plays a very familiar character in the role of jokey Jensen. I had a huge problem with White’s camera zooming in on Saldana mid-fight crawling away from her assailant on all fours – seriously, that’s Michael Bay tacky, and may prove problematic for some as it is indicative of a brief, very lazy misogyny.

Standouts for me though are Columbus Short as Pooch (with his miraculous Wolverine like powers of recovery – you’ll see what I mean), and having only seen Short in the Aaron Sorkin show Studio 60 it was great to see him here, and Oscar Jaenada as the taciturn sniper Cougar are great fun. To be clear there’s nothing much here in terms of character development, and certainly nothing to surprise, but everyone plays their part perfectly and The Losers needs them to elevate it above the ordinary.

The film has great style and a relentless pace which threatens to leave the casual viewer behind, conversely there’s not a huge amount to pay attention to in the way of plot deviations and the twists, when they come, are no surprise and have little impact on the outcome of the film at journey’s end. At one point the team implodes and characters are cut loose or leave, only to reappear like Han Solo at the end of Star Wars (only with a bazooka the size of a vaulting pole) to help out at just the right moment. At least the script is aware enough to have lines such as “I’m the black MacGuyver!” in it, and the film does well in keeping just one step removed from the cliches of its influences.

The Losers follows Kick-Ass into the cinemas by a matter of weeks, and is certainly nowhere near as good, subversive or as much fun. Where it deviates is clear though, and it is all a matter of consequence. In Kick-Ass the violence hurts, and bringing superhero sensibilites into the real world has a logical, visceral consequence. In The Losers though it is one outrageous set piece after another enacted in a strange violent bubble where city streets play mute witness to ridiculous firestorms of gunfire and bomb blasts; it is a self aware portfolio of violent espionage and vengeance whose initial serious and horrific incident is thrown away in favour of casual gunplay and lighthearted death dealing.

Warner Bros. (via Collider.com) have released a brand new batch of photos and a new video (via MySpace) for their new movie, The Loser which is directed by Sylvain White and stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Sargent Clay, Idris Elba as Roque, Chris Evans as  Jensen, Columbus Short as Pooch, Zoe Saldana as Aisha, and Oscar Jaenada as Cougar.

It’s set for release 23rd April in the US (no UK date as yet that I know of) and from what we’ve seen, looks great! Scroll down for the new video and the new images after the synopsis.

An explosive tale of double cross and revenge, “The Losers” centers upon the members of an elite U.S. Special Forces unit sent into the Bolivian jungle on a search and destroy mission.  The team—Clay (Morgan), Jensen (Evans), Roque (Elba), Pooch (Short) and Cougar (Jaenada)—find themselves the target of a lethal betrayal instigated from inside by a powerful enemy known only as Max (Patric).  Presumed dead, the group makes plans to even the score when they’re joined by the mysterious Aisha (Saldana), a beautiful operative with her own agenda.  Working together, they must remain deep undercover while tracking the heavily-guarded Max, a ruthless man bent on embroiling the world in a new high-tech global war.”

The Losers Exclusive

Trailer Park Movies | MySpace Video

It looks like it’s going to be a good year for men-on-a-mission films with The A Team reboot, The Expendables and The Losers.

The Losers is a adaptation of the Vertigo comic of the same name and as this new poster suggest, the film focuses on a group of misfits on a mission. It’ll probably be pretty good competition against The A Team but it probably won’t be quite as bad-ass as the Stallone directed The Expendables. You can watch the trailer for The Losers here and below is the brand new quad poster courtesy of Live for Films. In case you need a reminder the plot is as follows

An explosive tale of double cross and revenge, “The Losers” centers upon the members of an elite U.S. Special Forces unit sent into the Bolivian jungle on a search and destroy mission.  The team—Clay (Morgan), Jensen (Evans), Roque (Elba), Pooch (Short) and Cougar (Jaenada)—find themselves the target of a lethal betrayal instigated from inside by a powerful enemy known only as Max (Patric).  Presumed dead, the group makes plans to even the score when they’re joined by the mysterious Aisha (Saldana), a beautiful operative with her own agenda.  Working together, they must remain deep undercover while tracking the heavily-guarded Max, a ruthless man bent on embroiling the world in a new high-tech global war.

Not content with giving us a lovely new trailer for Sylvain White’s film adaptation of the DC/Vertigo comic book series The Losers, a new image has been published and it’s a good one.

Certainly, as The L.A. Times (via MovieWeb) point out the image is an almost identical replica of the comic book image, also included below. While similar in theme to the A-Team, this series melds government conspiracy and a stylised violence which is sure to play well on the big screen. White spoke to the Times about how he intended the film to play,

When I first read the screenplay, what struck me, the initial spark, was the opportunity for a really interesting mix of tones. It struck me almost as a comedy disguised in an action film. I felt recently there had been a lot of action movies that embrace grittiness and realness but also fall into a very straight and dark tone, generally. I thought here there was a really interesting balance drawn from the 2004 and 2005 [comics] reinventions of ‘The Losers’ that had hard, gritty action with a fun, light tone.

Check out the image below.

If someone asked me if I’ve read The Losers, i’d probably reply with an L symbol on my forehead at whoever said it but it turns out, The Losers is yet another comic book that I’ve never heard of! MSN have released a new trailer for the film version which is directed by Sylvain White and stars Zoe Saldana, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, Idris Elba and Columbus Short.

The Losers is based on the DC-Vertigo comic by Andy Diggle.Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think. I’t ram packed full of action and looks pretty good.

Plot: An explosive tale of double cross and revenge, “The Losers” centers upon the members of an elite U.S. Special Forces unit sent into the Bolivian jungle on a search and destroy mission.  The team—Clay (Morgan), Jensen (Evans), Roque (Elba), Pooch (Short) and Cougar (Jaenada)—find themselves the target of a lethal betrayal instigated from inside by a powerful enemy known only as Max (Patric).  Presumed dead, the group makes plans to even the score when they’re joined by the mysterious Aisha (Saldana), a beautiful operative with her own agenda.  Working together, they must remain deep undercover while tracking the heavily-guarded Max, a ruthless man bent on embroiling the world in a new high-tech global war.

Two photos from Warner Bros. comic book adaptation The Losers have made their way online.

The film’s log line is as follows:

After being betrayed and left for dead, members of a CIA black ops team root out those who targeted them for assassination.

Click the images to enlarge.
Whilst the comic itself is quite cool and the talented cast includes Jeffery Dean Morgan (Watchmen), Idris Elba (RocknRolla), Chris Evans (Sunshine), Zoe Saldana (Avatar), Jason Patric (The Lost Boys), and Ralph Macchio (The Karate Kid), I have been very skeptical about this project since Sylvain White took over directing duties.

If you are not familiar with White’s work, he is the man responsible for the atrocities known as Stomp the Yard and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. I will reserve judgement on The Losers until I actually watch the film, or at least a trailer, but all I’m saying is that I’m not quite sure how Sylvain got the job for this one.

The Losers is scheduled for release on April 9 2010.

Read the interview HeyUGuys recently conducted with Idris Elba about The Losers.