'The Losers' aims for laughs

Do Special Forces always wear camouflage in the jungle and stylish black blazers in the city? Are the members born with names like Cougar and Roque? Or are those handed out with the orientation and benefits package?

"The Losers," a winningly self-aware action flick, doesn't bother explaining - it doesn't need to. It knows you've already seen a thousand movies about knife-chomping commandos, and it's confident you totally want to see another. So listen up, ladies, we've got a plot to summarize:

In Bolivia, unshaven team leader Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is about to take down a drug lord. At the ready: master sniper Cougar (Óscar Jaenada), talkative techie Jensen (Chris Evans), weapons expert Pooch (Columbus Short) and demolition man Roque (Idris Elba). But wait, there are children in there! Our lovable Losers disobey orders but end up faking their own deaths to escape the jungle.

The man behind this mess is a snotty supervillain named Max, played purely for laughs by Jason Patric in a sleek suit with an American flag pin. Among his enemies is the mysterious Aisha (Zoe Saldana), who approaches Clay with a plan to kill Max and bring the Losers home.

Directed with almost no seriousness whatsoever by Sylvain White, "The Losers," based on the Vertigo comics, is always entertaining and frequently very funny. Writers Peter Berg ("Hancock") and James Vanderbilt ("Zodiac") send up pulp clichés but also indulge them, puncturing shootouts with wisecracks, then wisecracks about the wisecracks.

The movie isn't kidding about one thing: It ends with hints of a sequel, of course.