Check out The Losers trailer at AWNtv! [1]

Jesper Kjolsrud was the original visual effects supervisor for Image Engine [2] on The Losers, but Simon Hughes, the 2D supervisor, took over when he left for Toronto to supervise The Thing. Richard Yuricich [3] served as overall visual effects supervisor.
Image Engine was tasked with the main action sequences and Kjolsrud joined Yuricich on the shoot in Puerto Rico for those sequences. "The first of the sequences is what we call 'The Bus,'" explains Hughes. "This is where a jet flies in over a village in a jungle and drops two bombs on the village and our heroes are escaping from the bomb in a bus, racing through the jungle with the explosion chasing them.

There is no CG fire in The Losers. That's because it was adapted from a comic and director Sylvain White wanted the look in keeping with the graphic style, which is a throwback to the '80s action flick, very much with tongue-in-cheek.
The next sequence is called "The Houston," where they fly through the bullet holes in the glass windows and go all over the Houston landscape. "That was a huge sequence for us," Hughes continues, "because it was an entire CG build involving the cityscape and the glass that we fly through."
Although it was meant to be in Houston, Image Engine built around eight full CG buildings in the foreground, which are actually textures that they took from buildings in San Juan. And the backgrounds were comprised of stills taken of Vancouver, so Houston is basically a hybrid of modern cities from around the world.

The Miami sequence, meanwhile, involves a helicopter with a large magnet on the bottom, which picks up an armored vehicle on the streets of Miami and then flies into a building with a Dunkin Donuts sign on top of it. "Again, a really nice, challenging sequence, with the main part of the job being hard surface CG," Hughes explains.
In fact, the last major component Image Engine worked on was the jet sequence involving exploding planes and "all kinds of fun and games," according to Hughes. "It's a comp and effects artist's dream and the chance to show off."

Steve Garrad, Image Engine's Visual Effects senior visual effects producer, admits that it "did get a little hairy in the end because it was very tight in terms of delivery. Everyone loves to carry on editing these days, and that never makes our life easy. But, in fairness to the guys at Dark Castle, we started the big explosion shots early and they kept them in. In fact, Joel [Silver] liked them so much, he added another one toward the end, so we turned over another shot of a plane exploding in a week. I always think that jobs are at their most efficient and everyone's working at the best right when you come to the end."
Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.
Links:
[1] http://www.awntv.com/videos/the-losers-trailer/
[2] http://www.awn.com/articles/profiles/idistrict-9i-bringing-back-80s-sci-f
[3] http://www.awn.com/articles/visual-effects/recreating-antarctica-iwhiteouti
[4] http://www.awn.com/articles/review/houdini-10-review-getting-motion-fx
[5] http://www.awn.com/news/business/autodesk-unveils-2011-lineup
[6] http://www.awn.com/articles/tutorials/imaya-plugin-poweri-renderman-compliance/page/2
[7] http://www.awn.com/news/technology/genarts-unveils-monsters-gt-adobe-after-effects-and-more