Also known as Nam's Angels, The Losers is a curious movie. How in the world could someone make a movie about Hell's Angels being conscripted by the U.S. for a secret mission in Vietnam boring? I'm not sure, either, but director Jack Starrett did just that. A quick look at his career over at the IMDB finds only one classic Blacksploitation film - Cleopatra Jones - and a few episodes of the Dukes of Hazard. Stellar.
While the plot is not exactly clear (there's a lot of boring expository dialog), we gathered that a mealy-mouthed American VIP is thrown into a Cambodian prison. The U.S. military's only option, it seems, is to give the mission to a gang of bikers called the "Devil's Advocates," one of whom sports a neon-green bandanna with a swastika drawn on it for most of the movie. It seemed as though they were veterans, but the movie didn't really do a good job of explaining this.
While the plot is not exactly clear (there's a lot of boring expository dialog), we gathered that a mealy-mouthed American VIP is thrown into a Cambodian prison. The U.S. military's only option, it seems, is to give the mission to a gang of bikers called the "Devil's Advocates," one of whom sports a neon-green bandanna with a swastika drawn on it for most of the movie. It seemed as though they were veterans, but the movie didn't really do a good job of explaining this.
The Advocates ultimately spend most of their time making themselves tempting targets for the V.C. by zooming around the warzone in their motorcycles and hooting, chugging beers and smoking opium with prostitutes. I don't know if you could call this movie a cross between Easy Rider and The Dirty Dozen (it's not even on the same planet of filmmaking as those two), but I suppose that was the goal.
Most of the screentime is swallowed up by forty minutes of uncomfortable romance between the bikers and native women. While I'm sure all this crap was made to show that the boys were goodhearted and add some emotional weight to the proceedings, I simply wanted the battle to ensue. When it finally does come, the bikers have their motorcycles souped-up with mounted machine guns and missile launchers.
Is this movie worth your $2?:
The final battle, while not as steeped in mayhem as it could have been, does succeed somewhat, but it's not nearly enough payoff for making the audience suffer through so much dull "plot." This film is no Eastern Condors (stay tuned for review), but it's probably worth a rental to any bikesploitation or Vietnam War movie completists. We must point out that The Losers does feature one of the finest slow-motion gut punches ever committed to celluloid when a fat hesher gets punched with a satisfying "thwack" in mid-beer chug, causing said liquid to eject from his mouth.
No comments:
Post a Comment