VOD Spotlight: Zoe Saldana’s incredible moves in “The Losers”

Zoe Saldana has had a marvelous recent career — first playing the young Uhura in the 2009 Star Trek and soon after as Avatar’s beautiful Na’vi, Neytiri. In The Losers, she plays Aisha, a mysterious woman who helps a commando group track down an enemy affiliated with the CIA who double-crossed them and left them for dead. As in Avatar, the role was physically demanding. But Saldana, who has a background in dance and had trained in martial arts for her role as Neytiri, was a natural choice to play Aisha.

“When we started discussing the role of Aisha, I instantly thought of Zoe. She has remarkable acting chops, but she also has the physicality the role demanded,” says director Sylvain White. “Aisha is not the lady in distress; quite the contrary, she’s the badass who actually rescues the men. She’s very capable, very strong and very determined, and Zoe brought her own genuine strength to her performance. She also happens to look very much like the character in the comic book [on which The Losers is based], so we were thrilled when she said yes.”

That strength is clear in a scene in which she and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays group leader Clay, have a brawl in a burning hotel room. “We took two days to shoot it, which is really fast for a scene like that. Usually you have a week,” Morgan says. “We only did a couple of takes because we only had couple of TVs we could break over my head; and, literally, we set the room on fire.”

But they did spend a month rehearsing that scene, which was played in nearly its entirety when Saldana appeared on The Daily Show at the time the film made its theatrical premiere. It’s a favorite on YouTube as well, and we’ve included a short clip of the action here.

“The Losers” is now showing on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.