To give you an indication of how quickly the sands can shift for both the comic book genre and the stars who appear in them, the first time Chris Evans, Zoe Saldana and Idris Elba co-starred together in the genre, Sylvain White’s The Losers flopped hard after failing to even reach $30 million at the box office despite decent enough reviews.
Fast forward eight years and the trio were reunited as Captain America, Gamora and Heimdall in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers: Infinity War, which hauled in over $2 billion. Of course, it’s hardly a like-for-like comparison, but The Losers ended up being populated by talent who would go on to make superhero cinema their bread and butter.
Between Evans, Saldana, Elba and Jeffrey Dean Morgan alone, they’ve got a combined total of 31 feature film appearances based on either comic books, graphic novels or superheroes, and that’s without even counting The Losers itself. The forgotten and perennially underrated actioner played extremely well on Netflix when it was initially added to the library last November, so it might do the same again now that it’s back.
It’s hardly going to be held up as a classic, but if you’re looking for a way to waste 90 minutes of your day with some mindless entertainment packed to the brim with stylish set pieces and snappy one-liners, then there are many worse choices available than The Losers. The ensemble all fit their roles perfectly, and while the narrative is about as predictable as it gets and there’s barely a shred of originality on display, when it comes to late night or lazy weekend entertainment, it’s always going to be worth checking out.
Published: Aug 1, 2021 09:41 am