The A-Team (2010)

Movie Info

I love it when a plan comes together

When John “Hannibal” Smith (Liam Neeson), Templeton “Face” Peck (Bradley Cooper), Bosco “B.A.” Baracus (Quinton “Rampage” Jackson), and H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock (Sharito Copley) are thrown together on a mission in Mexico, they find working together as a team could have its advantages. After years of missions, they find themselves requested for a secret mission by the CIA Lynch (Patrick Wilson) and General Morrison (Gerald McRaney), but things quickly go sideways. Now, the only way for the “A-Team” to prove their innocence is to escape prison and find the men responsible for framing them…but Face’s old girlfriend Charissa Sosa (Jessica Biel) is on the trail of the fugitives.

Directed by Joe Carnahan (who also helped write the screenplay), The A-Team is a big screen adaptation of the 1980s action-adventure series which ran from 1983-1987. The movie was met with average reviews and a so-so box office return.

Though it was right in my time period, I was never a big fan of The A-Team. I watched it on occasion (my neighbor and half my class loved it), but I just found it ho-hum (but Mr. T was an icon). I don’t have the nostalgia heading into The A-Team, and I found it actually gave me a different view of the series.

B.A. and Murdock together again for the first time!

The movie loses a lot of the fun of the series. The A-Team was an action series, but it was practically an action comedy. The film version leans heavier on the action with much of the film focusing around Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper’s characters (where it seems like the TV series had Mr. T and Dwight Schultz as the stars if you were a kid). The action is quite mundane and Patrick Wilson is such an obvious bad guy that it isn’t a surprise when he flips (and I’d expect more out of a special ops team like the A-Team in regards to trusting him).

The weirdest thing about this movie is that B.A. seems to get the least amount of time of the four leads. Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper both have plotlines surrounding their characters, and Sharlto Copley’s “insanity” gets him a lot of play. Jackson’s “non-violence” storyline kind of sidelines the character for a lot of the movie. Patrick Wilson is a good slimy guy but I wish he had been less slimy to start out and Jessica Biel tries to pull a Karen Sisco (from Out of Sight) with her character. Jon Hamm has an uncredited appearance in the film as well.

We’re just two hideous people trapped in a photo booth

The movie’s action sequences honestly don’t look that great. With films like the Bourne movies and Mission: Impossible really nailing down some great special effects, the movie feels like it could have been really fun if it had embraced the low-tech nature of the A-Team. The falling tank sequence almost works, but it still feels like it could look better…it is like the film thought too highly of itself and its writing.

The A-Team is kind of a snoozer. It is an average film that makes me actually nostalgic for the old A-Team. If someone put a box-set of the original series in front of me or gave me the option to watch this movie again, I’d be popping in the classic. With an average return on the film, The A-Team doesn’t look like it will return in this form (and that’s ok).