The Losers

The Losers gets out into cinemas ahead of this summer's A-Team adaptation and covers pretty much similar territory - a bunch of elite special forces operatives are framed for things they didn't do, have to fake their own deaths and then battle to get their lives back.

The film begins well, even if it offers little that's really original. The characters are sharply drawn (if a bit stereotypical), the actors cool and on top of their game, the dialogue is witty and the action well handled. There's even the freeze frame nods to the graphic novel source material (ok, we've seen it before, but it still works). The villain (Jason Patric enjoying every minute of being unlikeable) is suitably nasty and heartless. It looks like we're in for a thoroughly entertaining ride.

And then the MacGuffin is introduced - the sonic destruction device or some such - a concept that make's last week's sands of time look thoroughly plausible with dreadful effects shots to match.

It is a credit to the cast - Chris Evans, excellent as always, an underplaying Harry Dean Morgan and The Wire's Idris Elba, together with flavour of the moment Zoe Saldana - a script that refinds its feet quickly and action sequences and set-ups that on the whole work (although the whole plane-motorcycle thing stretches it a bit too far) that this returns to be a highly entertaining action flick.

Overall - 7/10 It's not good enough to blow The A-Team away before it even arrives, but does set the bar for that film pretty high. Its never exactly original, but mainly very well done and entertaining. With a better central plot-device it could have been really good.