The A-Team
By Ad Ross at 29 November, 2010, 12:01 am
The 1980s revival roles on, whether you want it to or not! And so here is the latest phase; a big screen adaptation of teamtime tv series.
The A Team is one of three heavyweight action team-ups to emerge this summer. The first saw Watchmen’s Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) team up with the Human Torch (Chris Evans) and Stringer Bell from HBO’s The Wire (Idris Elba) in The Losers. The third will see Sylvester Stallone call on every action star in existence to make The Expendables.
The A Team certainly had the biggest budget and did not lack of an engaging cast. Liam Neeson is rarely poor, while Bradley Cooper and Sharlto Copley both made their names in unexpected hits last summer, and seemed good fits for their respective roles as ‘the Faceman’ and ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock. The only question mark seemed to hang over Quintin ‘Rampage’ Jackson, a professional cage fighter, who stepped into Mr T’s big boots as B.A. Baracus.
Yet despite this, unless The Expendables is dreadful, The A Team looks set to lose this triple-threat fire-fight.
The cast all do reasonable jobs, but only Patrick Wilson’s sleazeball CIA bad guy really excels. The action is often indecipherable and smothered in obvious CGI. The plot makes a modicum of sense, but that really doesn’t make up for the fact that the film lacks the charm of the TV series. All that’s left is a sub-Michael Bay explosion-fest littered with blockbuster clichés.
It would be unfair to describe The A Team as bad; everything is executed with a certain efficiency, but the whole affair seemed very lacklustre, lacking in any real inspiration.
It’s also quite inconsistent. The original show was always a family show; a little cartoonish, but warm-hearted and fun. The film, at times, touches on this spirit, yet then drops it. It’s as though the filmmakers vacillated between keeping that light atmosphere and trying re-imagine the concept as a gritty, realistic affair.
Considering its underperformance at the US box office, it seems unlikely a new franchise has been born and, on this evidence, that’s probably not a bad thing.
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