The A-Team

Although I was a child of the 80's, I only have vague memories of having watched The A-Team TV series back in the day. I'm sure I probably enjoyed it a lot then. The movie version of the series however, fails to illicit much from me as an adult.

Spoiler lite review follows.




The opening gambit has Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith (Liam Neeson) escaping from the custody of a couple of crooked cops somewhere in Mexico (really, that's what it said on the screen). On the way to try and rescue Lt. Templeton 'Faceman' Peck (Bradley Cooper) from a dastardly generic Mexican villain, Hannibal commandeers the newly acquired and much beloved van of B.A. Baracus (Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson) who is coincidentally a fellow Army Ranger. The duo arrive at the scene just in time to save Face and then go about the task of bringing the aforementioned villain to justice. The three men stop by at a hospital to pick up their pilot, Murdock (Sharlto Copley) whom they soon find out is a certified lunatic. The Evil Villain finds them just as they are about to take off in a helicopter and of course a helicopter chase sequence follows. I will admit that this sequence was quite well done and included a shot of a helicopter flying upside down (which is apparently really hard to do and really unlikely for the old medical whirlybird they were using). After successfully dispatching the Evil Villain, the team remains together for next eight years (I think) and are next seen during the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

A Company man, Lynch (Patrick Wilson), offers them a job recovering US currency engraving plates and a billion dollars which have apparently been stolen by Saddam loyalists. They agree despite the misgivings of their superior,  General Morrison (Gerald McRaney). They of course succeed in recovering the plates and cash but are betrayed when Morrison's vehicle blows up as it arrives to greet them and the plates are taken by some sort of black ops team known as Blackforest (a much better name for a cake than a black ops team if you ask me). They are blamed for the entire thing, assumed to have been in cahoots with Blackforest, and summarily dishonourably discharged and imprisoned.

The second act begins six months later with their escapes from their respective prisons with the help of Lynch who still wants them to recover the plates.  This starts off a series of operations involving lots and lots of explosions until the end of the show which runs rather long at around two hours.

In stark contrast to the other 80's revival movie opening in the same week - The Karate Kid - this movie was shallow and had the barest of barebones plots. With a few (very few) exceptions, the action scenes were nothing to shout about and had too many close-ups and quick cuts for the audience to linger much before being taken to the next explosion. I understand that this may have been a homage to the over-the-top style of the original series. If so, then it must have worked better as a 45-minute TV show rather than a two-hour movie. The acting was pedestrian and stereotypical. Even having Liam Neeson in the cast didn't help much. The movie reminded me a lot of that other elite-military-team-framed-for-a-crime-they-did-not-commit movie The Losers as both of them had highly similar plots and styles. I think the latter did a (slightly) better job in the genre.

There were some amusing moments and some good setpieces, but not enough to raise it beyond the level of disposable summer fodder. Hannibal often uses the line: "I love it when a plan comes together". I guess this movie just wasn't all that well planned.