REVIEW: The A-Team

SOUND AND FURY

There is something to be said about a film that generates such low expectations and then lives to them. To those who haven't seen or heard of the old TV series, a film titled The A-Team gives the impression of being a mindless action film, and that's exactly what it is. 

The A-Team consists of men (naturally!) with comic book names like John "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson), Templeton "Faceman" Peck (Bradley Cooper), H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley), Quinton “Rampage” jackson (B.A. Baracus).  If that doesn't immediately point to a pre-adolescent male target audience, then what would!

The A-Team is given a grand introduction sequence, then seen as an elite combat unit stationed in Iraq. Hannibal (Liam Neeson)  is assigned by CIA Agent Lynch (Patrick Wilson), to steal from Iraqi insurgents some U.S. treasury plates over one billion dollars in counterfeit currency.  In spite of warnings from Captain Charissa Sosa  (Jessica Biel, the token female) and his commanding officer, General Morrison (Gerald McRaney), Hannibal agrees to steal the plates in an unofficial mission.

When the team complete the mission successfully and return to base, the shipping container carrying the money is destroyed and Morrison killed, by men from the private security firm Black Forest, led by the wily Brock Pike (Brian Bloom).  Without  Morrison they can't prove that they were on the mission on behalf of the government. They are tried, dishonorably discharged and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Six months later, a Hannibal is visited in jail by Lynch, who tells him that Pike is trying to sell the plates. Hannibal offers to get the plates, if he and the Team are exonerated. Hannibal escapes, then gets the others out using bizarre methods.  Now Sosa, who has  her own axe to grind gets on their trail.

They track Pike and get the plates, but when they find out who Pike's cohort is, they are in for a shock.  (Those of us who have been fed a diet of Bollywood B films, can see this coming.)

The Team face a lot of adventures, close shaves, murder plots, double cross, subterfuge, and after a plot gets a bit too much to keep track of the goings-on. The kind of silliness and predictability that is okay for a TV series (the characters have to be one-dimensional if a viewer follows them over many seasons), but gets very cardboard-y in a film.

Action scenes, now assisted with copious CGI have, for example, the Team falling out of an exploding airplane inside an armored tank, by firing the gun to direct the fall of the tank and save themselves. And there has to be scene in which a moronic killer with his target right there, talks too much and gives a Team member the chance to come zooming in for a rescue. (It took almost a dozen writers to churn out a stuff like that!)

In all fairness, the film does not even aim at sophistication or cult status. If the franchise survives through a few more hits, everyone will be happy.