The A-Team is based on the popular 1980′s television series with a 21st century twist added to it. In the 2010 version, Alpha Team, affectionately known as The A-Team is made up of an elite group of U.S. Special Forces soldiers who, after 80 successful missions, are wrapping up their tour of duty in Iraq. Like the television series, The A-Team includes Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith (Liam Neeson), Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck (Bradley Cooper), James Murdock (Districk 9′s Sharlto Copley) and B.A. Baracus (UFC’s Quinton “Rampage” Jackson). On the verge of heading home to American soil, the men are asked to carry out one last operation — to retrieve some stolen money engraving plates that have fallen into the wrong hands in Iraq. Of course, things go terribly wrong and The A-Team find themselves being accused of trying to steal the plates for their own benefit — not a bad idea if you ask me, but regardless, it’s a crime they didn’t commit. The whole thing left me wondering — is the U.S. dollar even worth stealing these days? Perhaps it should have been plates that printed Canadian money.
The four members of The A-Team are thrown in military prisons throughout the world but six months later, they manage to escape and set out to prove their innocence. Unfortunately, they must do so with a CIA lackey named Lynch (Patrick Wilson) and a federal agent named Charisa Sosa (Jessica Biel) hot on their trail. Of course, with Hannibal Smith at the helm, it is not long before we hear him utter the words made famous in the 1980′s by George Peppard — “I love it when a plan comes together”.
I’m sure most fans of the 80′s TV show are going into this movie with high expectations. I have to admit, I have been pretty worried about The A-Team. It seems it was only a handful of months ago that it was being filmed in Vancouver and I was worried that the movie would end up being rushed. Although it’s not a total trainwreck, it’s not nearly as entertaining as another movie with a similar plotline that came out earlier this year — The Losers. I thoroughly enjoyed The Losers and remember leaving the theatre and hoping that The A-Team would be as entertaining. Unfortunately, The A-Team fell short.
That’s not to say that The A-Team is a complete waste, because it is not. There are some pretty decent action sequences. I really liked how the four men were introduced at the beginning of the movie. All three actors (and one mixed martial arts fighter) actually do a decent job of taking on the roles of their respective TV icons. Even Patrick Wilson is quite good and pretty funny as CIA agent Lynch. He delivers a few lines that made me laugh (“We have rules, ours are just cooler.”)
I suppose where The A-Team lost me was in two major areas, the first being something that I point out in every good vs. bad movie that I have ever seen — you need a great villain. The A-Team didn’t have a great villain but I won’t expand much more on that for fear of revealing spoilers. Let’s just say that I never felt like the boys were in any kind of danger and despite how ridiculous their plans managed to be, they always came together. Yeah, that was pretty much the premise of the entire TV series, but still — at least some kind of danger? It would have made things a lot more interesting.
The second major issue was the ending of the movie with all the explosions and storage bins falling all over the place. Again, it just seemed all too perfect, way too ridiculous and not really exciting, despite how loud and dramatic it was trying to be. There is no way that not a single member of The A-Team shouldn’t have been crushed like a pancake.
There is also one more pretty major complaint that I have with The A-Team. We’ve all been hearing for months about the famous cameos in the movie from some of the original cast members and the big debate as to whether Mr. T would make a fabulous appearance in the movie. I won’t get into too many details about who cameo-ed and who didn’t but I will say this — I watched the entire movie fairly closely. My mind might have been wandering for about five minutes or so at one point but other than that, I paid pretty close attention. I didn’t see any of the old cast make any sort of appearance. There was one actor that I thought could have been Dirk Benedict (the original “Faceman”) but I wasn’t sure and considering I didn’t hear one person in the crowd even react to a possible cameo, I figured either no one in the audience really cared or the actor just wasn’t in the movie. However, once the credits started rolling and I saw two original cast member names appear on the screen, I immediately thought, “Did I miss something?” and “Were the cameos that bad that I didn’t even notice them?” I usually stay in every movie right until the final credit has rolled just in case there is one last scene at the end of the movie. I love those final scenes after the credits are done, although I don’t like sitting through the 15-20 minutes it takes to get there.
Nevertheless, I waited until the very end of The A-Team credits and low and behold, what do I see? The two cameo appearances, for which I painfully waited, at the very end of the movie. Is that the best freakin’ place you could put them? Do you not think they deserved to appear in the actual movie and not 15 minutes after the movie had ended. I know at the screening I attended, out of the 50 or so people in attendance, 95% of them had left the theatre by the time the big cameos occurred. I’m sure that will be the case in many theatres around the world this weekend but I’m here to warn you — stay in this movie until the very end, as painful as it may be to sit though 20 minutes of credits. I do think the original actors deserved more than a 10 second appearance at the end of the credits.
In the end, I’m not going to sit here and say don’t go see The A-Team. I will just warn you to proceed with caution. It’s a fairly decent movie but it’s not nearly as good as I was hoping it would be. If you’re okay with seeing just an “okay” movie, then The A-Team is the movie for you. I’ll even label it with the term you’re probably going to hear associated with this movie over and over again — it is a 100% bonafide “popcorn flick” — nothing more, nothing less. If you are interested in seeing a similar plotline and being much more entertained, then I suggest going to see The Losers. For Chris Evans alone, go see The Losers. Then after that go see The A-Team. That should put everything all in perspective.
