The Losers are a team of five soldiers -- a leader (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a driver (Columbus Short), a hacker (Chris Evans), a sniper (Oscar Jaenada) and a killer (Idris Elba) -- framed for a bunch of innocent deaths while on a mission in Bolivia and written off as dead by the CIA. As the five attempt to get by, working and gambling the days away in the Bolivian town they're hiding out in, a woman (Zoe Saldana) shows up and tells them that she can bankroll a mission against the man who burned them and tried to kill them. What follows is an elaborate series of attempts to capture that man, Max (Jason Patric), that end in a lot of blood, explosions and betrayal.

The cast is great, and works well together. Morgan wears haunted eyes through much of the film, except when he's fighting/flirting with Saldana's character, and dresses like he just stepped out of a GQ cover shoot. Elba is his usual cantankerous self, this time with a keen eye scar, and Evans is his usual chatty self, hitting on ladies constantly like he did as Johnny Storm, but with less success. Short is occasionally very funny as the driver and family man, and Jaenada has a bright future in American films as the cool, mysterious type. Saldana is cool, too -- as well as sexy and possibly crazy -- as their moneywoman, and her introductory fight scene with Morgan is a brutally choreographed feast for the eyes. Jason Patric is cartoonishly evil as Max, shooting underlings for small errors, reversing orders on a whim and mimicking the accents of his Indian scientists. His right-hand-man, Wade (Holt McCallany), is actually more interesting, because he seems amused by Max's antics and insults, and equally cold-blooded without feeling the need to be wacky. He also shares a history with the Losers, who are less thrilled about tangling with him than with the unknown quantity that is Max.

Not that they have any reason to be afraid. The Losers are all very good at what they do, and can make impossible shots and pull off impossible tasks, given enough planning. Normally, that would be considered "awesome," except that their confidence makes it hard to worry that anything might happen to them in the movie. Anything they need, they just take, and they do it with such ease that they can make jokes the entire time. At no point do you think any of them are in any danger of being killed, and even when they're hurt, which is rare, they tend to get better very quickly. (For instance, Saldana and Morgan walk away from their massive fight with zero bruises.) And the science-fiction weapon they eventually learn they need to stop is so fantastical that the minute you see it in action you're pulled right out of the movie, because what you thought was the real world is now some bizarre alternate universe where these kinds of things exist. (Maybe it's the Matrix?)

So if you don't mind a little comic-book fantasy in your military adventure, you're gonna have a great time. But if you're expecting realism, you may want to wait for The Expendables. (And even then, realism will likely be relative.)

What did you think of The Losers? Let us know below, then see why the cast are already geek royalty despite their losingest roles.

Check out how The Losers utilizes one of our favorite action movie clichés.

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