The A-Team (2010, PG-13)

Rating: ***

The A-Team could be just about as messy and noisy as movie’s get these days.  It’s also almost as much fun as they get to.  It’s based off of the TV show of the same name from the 80s, and the movie just about as shallow as the popular show was as well.

The movie stars Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton Jackson and Sharlto Copley as US Army Special Forces Team members: John ‘Hannibal’ Smith, Templeton ‘Face’ Peck, Bosco Albert Baracus, and ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock respectively.  The thin and shallow though still entertaining plot starts off with this team in Mexico, where they bad together to fend off the enemy and escape.  For 8 years and 80 successful missions, they distinguish themselves as among the best of the US Army’s soldiers.  On what is supposed to be another normal mission in Iraq, they are framed, dishonorably discharged, and place in separate military camps.  6 months later, they break each other out of jail and set out to prove their innocence and regain their honor.

The results for the A-Team was overall better and funnier than I expected.  My original doubts about the cast was vanquished.  Neeson did a good job, even though he’s Irish portraying American and his accent is noticeable at times, he captured his character well: the big, tough, experienced army colonel with a .45 by his side and a cigar in his mouth.  Cooper is also surprisingly good as lady’s man Peck.  UFC fighter Jackson has proven his capability as an actor here.  South African actor Copley’s accent is more noticeable then Neeson, but he pulls it off swell.  His character of Murdock I found the most comical.

As with any action comedy flick, the A-Team has its fair share of faults and plot holes.  The plot is well used and as I said above, shallow, like the TV show.  The end action sequence in a shipyard is also overly cartoonish and the computer CGI effects are a little too obvious. 

Big, loud, noisy and humorous, the A-Team is a mess.  Ultimately, it’s still nothing special and is what I like to call, a popcorn flick.  As a summer action film it succeeds in better style then I anticipated.  But as a storyteller, the quality is quite perceptibly under average. 

I won’t be surprised if a sequel, and actually a whole new franchise, is launched.

                                  ***/5