Were you one of the few moviegoers who bought a ticket to Warner Bros.' The Losers last weekend? (WB and genre geeks alike thought there'd be a lot more of you on opening weekend, but c'est la vie ...) If you did catch the ensemble action comedy about a squad of soldiers gone rogue for revenge, then you can help us solve the greatest mystery of the spring movie season, an enigma greater than Kick-Ass' epic fail at the box office: namely, is Jason Patric's performance as Max amazing, or just silly?

As far as comic book villains go, Max is deceptively normal ... at first. He meets Lt. Colonel Franklin Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his men in the Bolivian jungle via walkie-talkie, where within minutes they hear him issue the orders to kill them that accidentally off a helicopter full of children instead. As the squad comes after Max, Max continues with his regularly scheduled plot to either A) make entire islands disappear with the help of weapons called "snukes," B) sell said snukes to random terrorist groups, C) use said terrorist attacks to justify starting war on behalf of the U.S.A., or D) all of the above. It's never that clear where Max's motives lie along the spectrum of money, power, or good old-fashioned patriotism, but that doesn't really matter. He's evil, he's well-dressed, and he's quirky, and like some of the best villains in movie history, that may be all that matters.

Max leads with his unsettlingly placid, nerdy-smooth-scary voice, perhaps because, aside from his dapper fashion choices and the single glove he wears to hide a mysteriously mangled left hand, there's not much remarkable or particularly intimidating about the way he looks. At different times Max could pass for a banker or a foppish businessman on holiday -- heck, he even has his own personal umbrella holder, a la P. Diddy and his Farnsworth Bentley. Only difference is, Diddy never shot Farnsworth for failing to shade his face from the sun.

And so, Max's iconoclastic style aside, his ability to terrorize comes from within. Patric, the onetime '80s hunk who looked so sweet and earnest in The Lost Boys before he lost his way after the sinking of Speed 2: Cruise Control, seems acutely aware of the need to make Max memorable. His Max is a barely-restrained megalomaniac with a razor-sharp wit lying right beneath the surface, ready to pounce on each and every woeful troglodyte who crosses his path or dares to challenge him. He's like the most dangerous member of MENSA, armed with an above-average IQ and sociopathic leanings; that voice, that unnaturally even, measured, calculating voice, lies somewhere between smooth criminal and impatient tech support guy.

So it's clear that Patric's going for something here. Or, in the least, he's giving himself over to the material -- material that asks him to go so over the line of good taste that, in one scene, he taunts a group of Indian weapon developers with Slumdog Millionaire cracks, complete with Indian accent, and rudely tells a height-challenged man how short he is. But hey, in this movie Max's racial insensitivity is just another character detail, and Patric goes for it (mostly) with gusto.

Which brings me to the flip side of the equation. Max is undoubtedly a departure for Patric, who's mostly avoided mainstream fare and has definitely avoided taking on such cartoonish characters as this. And while I found Max the character to be fairly amusing, I personally felt something missing in Patric's performance. Something essential. Something heartfelt. I'm not convinced that Patric was the right person for the role, because his Max feels a tad disingenuously off-kilter. I never quite believed that Patric's heart was in Max.

That's not to say he doesn't try. But how can you believe an actor if he doesn't seem like he believes in the movie he's in? Patric's said he's not a comic book guy, and his performance unfortunately feels like a thespian's good-natured college try at playing a comic book villain. He looks like he doesn't give a f***, but not in a good way -- not like real, honest-to-God, off-kilter actors who you truly believe are a little bit insane. (Gary Busey, anyone?)

So I'm torn on the matter of Jason Patric's Max. Without that essential, authentic kick of real live crazy, he's just a guy in a suit being obnoxious. Wearing a single glove. Playing upset when his "punch him in the face" nod is mistaken for a "throw him off the roof" nod. Taunting everybody around him with an air of superiority. Max is either the brilliantly eccentric villain the script intended, or he's just Jason Patric acting silly. And sadly, I still can't really tell which.