The A-Team

Ahh, The A-Team. You remember getting up every morning, putting on your leg warmers and parachute pants or whatever the kids wore those days, running down the stairs and switching the TV on to watch this 80's classic? Those were the days...I wasn't born then and I've never watched the show, but hey, I've googled some stuff.

The A-Team was a light-hearted kids show about four Vietnam vets on the run from the military for a crime they did not commit. On their adventures as outlaws, they would help members of the public in dire situations. The show was famous for its campy nature, its cheesiness and also for the fact that no one ever seemed to get injured, let alone die, in a single episode of the five-series show. So it made sense for the director of the blood-soaked, gratuitously violent and nutso actioner Smokin' Aces to helm the movie adaptation. Uhhhh...

Joe Carnahan's 2010 version has pretty much the same premise as the original TV series. The A-Team is a four-member elite combat unit lead by Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith. After an unofficial mission to bring back stolen treasury plates, the four heroes are thrown in prison with a ten-year sentence when their commander is killed, meaning the team have no way of proving that they were working on behalf of the US government.

Six months later and the team busts out of prison through rather over-elaborate means and are set on proving their innocence by blowing loads of shit up and causing millions of dollars in damages. Cut to disgruntled taxpayer who's, well, y'know, he's pissed off.

The team is supported by CIA agent Lynch (a coolio Patrick Wilson), who helps in their prison escape, while hunted down by the government and Faceman's ex-girlfriend Captain Charissa Sosa (Jessica Biel). And guess what? There's a twist! No, wait, there's two twists!

I don't think there's any denying that this film is freakin' insane. Nothing in the movie is subtle, it's all loud and clear, which sounds like a downside, but it really isn't. It all aids in what can only be called a joy-ride of pure entertainment, which is the only thing Carnahan set out to do. Let me tell you, it works marvelously.

The action sequences are mesmerisingly over-the-top, very much in the style of Smokin' Aces but without the overflowing swimming pools of blood and guts gushing everywhere. There's a scene where our four guys are in a plane which explodes into a million pieces, they get in a tank with a parachute attached, and while falling towards the earth at God knows what speed, fire at planes with a machine gun, all while blasting the tank's cannon to fly the goddamn thing so they can land in a river. It's....it's so entertaining.

Carnahan's a fantastic action director and he perfectly handles these adrenaline-fuelled set-pieces. True, there's some modern-day-cliche shaky cam involved, but the erratic events on-screen do call for this and it very much works to the film's advantage. He creates tension, engaging the viewer in what is going on as we wonder what's going to explode or catapult into the air next.

The cast is all on top-form, delivering performances which are true to those of the characters in the series. They all take the well-known traits of these TV icons and portray them on the big screen in a gloriously cheesy fashion. Liam Neeson is Hannibal, the cigar-chomping lover of plans that come together. Neeson is quite admirable as the team's leader, giving a strong, notable and highly likable performance. However, I've never been a fan of the Irish actor's American accent and here it's, err, questionable, but I suppose it works with the film's humorous tone.

Quinton Jackson is B.A. Baracus, the role made famous by Mr. T (who's, like, awesome). Jackson does a great job of sporting a mohawk, saying "fool" twice in every sentence and being an angry black man who punches things, mostly people. I kid, he is actually pretty impressive in the role, there's a lot of deliberate LOL moments in his portrayal. But you can't beat Mr. T, because, as previously stated, he's just so awesome.

Faceman is played by Bradley "Hunky McHunkerston" Cooper, the womanising, laid-back con-man of the group. I actually don't know if his performance was good or not, becuase I was staring into his beautiful, gorgeous eyes for the entirity of the movie, but I assume he was decent enough. *whispers* He was.

And finally, we have Sharlto Copley (yeah, that guy from District 9) as Murdock, a genuinely quirky, weird, possibly insane man who I wouldn't trust to hold my ham sandwich. He's the group's highly skilled pilot and can actually fly a helicopter upside down. Seriously, he does. I'm gonna say that Copley's the best of the four leads, he carries a convincing American accent (in your face, Neeson) and his performance seemed the most convincing to me.

The film's writing has a lot of laughs, such as an incompetent assassin and B.A's, well, B.A-isms. I found the script by Carnahan, Brian Bloom and Skip Woods to be pretty damn witty with the dialogue shining and allowing the characters to come alive. It lets them interact well with each other and you can really feel their friendship and commitment to one another. Tis quite moving. Oh, and the show's popular catchphrases are all there, in-your-face and not really caring about it. Respect.

The A-Team is well-paced and structured with a spectacularly action-packed 20 minute opening sequence introducing the characters. The editing's great, intercutting the going-over of a plan with the plan being set in motion, which actually happens twice in the movie. This isn't unique, it's been done before, but for some reason it did stand out for me.

Overall, The A-Team is a fun, thrilling, hilarious, exciting, fun-fest of fun-ness. It's everything that The Losers wanted to be and failed to achieve. It's camp, it's over-the-top, it's a great night out and it's a plan that certainly pieced itself into a complete form. No, wait, what's that catchphrase....

9/10