Thursday, August 19, 2010

Moofies - The A-Team (2010)



EXPECTATIONS: The original A-Team series takes me back to being a young kid again and totally loving it. The plots are a little slow and boring, but it's heaps of fun. I just hope that fun is the focus of this new remake and they don't try and shove some serious overtones and hipster shaky cam down my throat.


REALITY: This is a little messy and completely retarded, but I think The A-Team does what it probably set out to do (other than make loads of cash) and that's bring the mood of the original series into the 21st century.


Firstly, the casting is spot on. I'm not a Liam Neeson fan at all, but he acts like Hannibal, Bradley Cooper looks like he could be related to Dirk Benedict, Quinton Jackson pulls off a Mr.T impression that's nuanced enough that it doesn't feel like he's just taking the piss, and Shartlo Copley (Wikus from District 9) does crazy, whacky Murdoch just fine. They're similar enough to the original cast that it is actually the A-Team and not just another action movie with the same name, and they're different enough to make it fresh and different.


The action is completely over the top (one scene sees Faceman operating a cannon weapon as it falls out of a plane) but I would expect nothing less. I think what lets the film down a lot is the overly confusing plot. Let me see if I can explain it:


The A-Team are a military team who are asked specifically not to go on a mission. They go anyway and are framed by some other naughty team; so the naughty team are the bad guys, right? Then they go undercover in order to return to America and their lives back home with the help of this guy who they met that one time before they did that mission. Jessica Biel is chasing after them, but she's not a bad guy; she works for the government or something. Then she's also chasing that one guy because he is maybe bad. So she's chasing the A-Team and that one guy who is with the A-Team, except she's good, and the naughty team are chasing the A-Team, and that one guy is actually bad or something.


Maybe I'm just a bit thick, but I like my dumb over the top action movies to have really simple plots. None of the characters are actually developed in any way, so adding more 1 dimensional characters to the story just makes the whole thing more confusing than necessary.


It's also a shame that The Losers came out earlier this year because the story is very similar and I think it stole a bit of The A-Team's thunder.


Still, it could have been much worse and much more forgettable. It's pretty fun.


***

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