The A-Team (Review)

There are two advantages to having a branch of Cash Converters directly over the road from my office; firstly, if I ever have something stolen I can just nip over half an hour later and buy it back, and secondly I can buy oodles of DVDs six months after release for a tenth of their retail price.

Anyway, I recently picked up a few box sets of the A Team in anticipation of the film and watching the series again for probably the first time in twenty years several things strike me about it, not least the extremely high production values (for the 1980's) but also the truly excellent stuntwork. I don't know who the helicopter pilot was for the series, but they were brilliant, and the stuntmen and stunt drivers were good too and alas if there's one thing that the film really lacks from the series, it's this. In the original series if I saw someone leap from a helicopter onto a speeding truck, I could be pretty sure that it was a real stuntman taking a real jump and I'd be duly impressed by the skill and bravery on show. On the other hand the opening sequence of the film features a CGI - heavy helicopter chase and it just doesn't have the same resonance. It isn't real, it even doesn't look all that real, and I'm not duly impressed.

It's a shame, because overall the film is a lot - a heck of a lot - better than I thought it was going to be. Seriously. I expected it to suck like, say, the remakes of the Dukes of Hazzard and Starsky and Hutch did, but it actually turns out to be really good fun. The character dynamic between the four leads is as strong as it ever was in the series, and Sharlto Copley and Bradley Cooper give stand-out turns as Murdock and Face. Moreover, it retains many of the series' signature moments - busting Murdock out of a military asylum (whose inmates are more like attendees at a One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest theme party than actual victims of PTSD), a montage sequence to build the equipment needed for a plan and then, of course, loving it when said plan comes together. The plot is largely irrelevant and the whole exercise is just an origins tale about how the team became soldiers of fortune who, if you have a problem and nobody else can help, etc but it whips along at a fair old pace and you're never far from either a set piece or some genuinely funny characterisation (usually from Face or Murdock again). Even the seemingly toe-curling scene in the parachuting tank from the trailer turns out to be, whilst not exciting, at least enjoyable. If you stop and think about the whole thing for a second it all falls to bits, yes, but fortunately I'm good at not thinking about what I'm doing. I mean, my love life has proven that time and again.

There are bum notes, such as BA's character arc which features him finding peace and swearing off violence in prison, only to reach an epiphany at the end in which he concludes that killing people is okay (Why, Hollywood? I mean, really. Why?) and Liam Neeson brings a touch too much thespian gravitas to Hannibal's cheesy smugness, but for the most part I had a fairly broad grin plastered over my features for more time than I didn't, which is usually a sign I'm having fun. Overall, I'd rate it as a four-star film - much higher than anyone could reasonably have expected - were it not for the twenty-minute CGIathon harbourside/container ship ending which was so patently designed with the videogame conversion in mind that at times it was painful; watching people dodge falling shipping containers (by tapping star now) and then engaging in an FPS firefight (target the rogue CIA agent when he flashes red) just sucked all the joy of the strong character work and comedy - yes, comedy - from the preceding hour and a half.

So - three stars. Or four if you leave about twenty mintues from the end.

Incidentally, did I ever mention the time I got Dwight Schulz to NPC a game I ran? No? Well, you see...