Film Review The A-Team 
US 2010. Cert 12A. 117 mins. Dir: Joe Carnahan. Cast: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Quinton Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Sharlto Copley
Film Review: The A-Team
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Any remake of a TV show so full of 80s nostalgia is sure to receive a mixed response – reeling in the newbies too young to have experienced the original, while either satisfying or infuriating die-hard fans. Joe Carnahan’s attempt at updating The A-Team and bringing it to the big screen is guaranteed to divide opinion.
After eight years and 80 successful missions together, The A-Team find themselves stripped of their ranks and sentenced to 10 years each in different far-flung maximum security prisons after being set-up for the murder of General Morrison. When the CIA ordered the army to stay out of Baghdad with the threat of court martials, alarm bells should have rung for the team but instead they characteristically view the job as a challenge. Just as they are returning the stolen dollar plates, an insider intercepts them, stealing the goods and killing their boss – the only man who can prove they were acting on an order.
Six months later, the gang are still planning to somehow avenge the general’s murder and clear their names, believing CIA agent Pike set them up. With a little bit of help from a mysterious CIA agent and some spectacular and inventive escapes, the team are reunited and ready to “specialise in the ridiculous”.
Remaining faithful to the light-hearted vibe of the original, Carnahan re-imagines the A-Team’s birth in a lengthy title sequence showing how B.A., Hannibal, Face and Murdoch meet. All US Rangers with gung-ho attitudes, the formulation of the gang is almost seamless. The opening scene set in Mexico where a baddie exclaims, “Only a hard-headed gringo would come down here alone” is perhaps a favourite, as an unseen Hannibal escapes two hungry dogs without using force, in keeping with the TV show’s ability to avoid on-screen death.
Their meeting is not the only poetic licence Carnahan takes in reinventing their downfall. Aside from attempts to update the story by bringing the crew to Iraq, he tries to remain faithful to the original characters, their group dynamics and character traits. Murdoch is a psychiatric patient in hospital, trying to give B.A. treatment when we first meet him and later busted from another hospital in Germany, in the most satisfying 3D rescue mission. Hannibal is still the daddy of the group, their “old man”, Face is the ladies’ man and B.A. the flight-fearing lovable muscleman, now undergoing an identity crises – having read Gandhi in prison he’s taken a vow to abstain from killing anyone.
Liam Neeson doesn’t quite nail the humour in Hannibal’s character and Quinton Jackson somehow never seems quite right as B.A., but Bradley Cooper is a likeable and convincing Face, and Sharlto Copley plays Murdoch with the perfect level of intelligent insanity, always looking for his near-death experience. Together the gang are convincing enough and rivalry with the CIA (“assassins in polo shirts”) is another source of humour.
Fans unimpressed with the lack of signature music in the trailer are mildly appeased elsewhere. Carnahan’s A-Team was clearly designed as a summer blockbuster bursting with action – sometimes too fast-moving for the eye to follow. His blurring of the Face and Hannibal role is interesting and there is clearly scope for a sequel. Unfortunately Hannibal’s saying – “There’s a plan in everything; I love it when a plan comes together” – doesn’t quite apply to this ambitious but flawed reinvention.
Out in cinemas from 30 July
Posted on Thursday 29th July 2010
Leo Owen
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