The Losers

With the central premise of a band of soldiers hitting the revenge trail, wanted for a crime they didn't commit, you could be forgiven for thinking the A-Team movie has come early. Based on a comic, The Losers plays like a one-stop shop for all your action-movie-cliches. Not only are the characters all beefy quip machines (sole female Saldana barely registers amid the posturing) but the dated execution and style – skip-frames, cartoony captions, thundering soundtrack – conspire to make it a film you could know all about without actually needing to watch. Still, it has a breezy charm, thanks to Jason Patric's nutjob badguy and Evans's comic relief, while the plot is effective if mechanical. Only the strangely coy approach to violence (deaths are nearly all offscreen), leaves a odd aftertaste, but not enough to taint the big dumb fun.