New Review: The A-Team

B-Roll

This weekend, audiences finally get a bit of diversity in their summer movie going schedules. That is they will be able to choose between two different films based on property released in the 1980s. Audiences today will have the option of choosing between the remake of many childhood's classic The Karate Kid (though now relocated to China and practicing kung fu), and this film, the feature length adaptation of the, admittedly, campy television series. Depending on your childhood, you might find either one intriguing. Not being born in the '80s, neither one is greatly appealing to me. I choose this one, and immediately after it was done, I regretted it.

For those who don't know, the A-Team is a renegade unit in the military that is used for out-of-the-box situations. The leader is the towering Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson). The rest of the team includes the suave ladies man Faceman Peck (Bradley Cooper), the muscle man with a fear of flying B.A. Baracus (UFC's Quinton "Rampage" Jackson), and the flying expert with an apparent mental problem Murdock (District 9's Sharlto Copley). During one mission involving the retrieval of counterfeit money plates, the team is framed for incompetence and wrongfully sentenced to jail. They break out to seek justice for the wrongdoers.

Director Joe Carnahan is not particularly a name that attracts me in the first place. His last movie, Smokin' Aces, is a chaotic mess that was high on its own nonsense. This time, the style is toned down a bit, but most of the action sequences still retain such a frantic tone that the scenes are indiscernible. Not only that, but this film goes on and on and on; every action scene is endless in its depiction of mindless, head-numbing action. The credit sequence of the film is dedicated to the formation of the group, and it feels like the entire film. Then, after fast-forwarding eight years, you get endless scenes of their mission in which they're framed, their eventual escape, their plan to clear their names, their plan to get revenge, and so on. This is a never-ending movie, and all of it drags on the attention span. Adding to it, the horrible script indulges on bland humor, manufactured tension, wildly shifting paces and jumbled timelines that all add up to suspense-less, poor storytelling.

Of the four members of the team, only Copley manages to make it out of here somewhat intact. He's pretty much the only source of humor and fun in the entire film, and he scores enough laughs to make himself justified in this picture. Cooper has some charm here and there, but I certainly wouldn't call him a selling point. Neeson is at the point in his career where all he has to do is show up, and he can look like a badass (i.e. Taken). Jackson, though, is just downright terrible. He's a horrible actor, apparent from the get-go, and he poorly handles a character that is uninteresting when he's killing people and boring when he's spouting phony wisdom against non-violence, which then gets turn around when Gandhi is used as a motivation for violence (I'm not kidding). Patrick Wilson is one of the stupidest, annoying villains around, and I honestly do not know why Jessica Biel is in this movie. If it was for sex appeal, it failed because her character is not used for very sexy or appealing ways.

I suppose if you liked the show, you might like the movie. But as far as I'm concerned, this carries just as much cheese as the show did. The plot is ridiculous and poorly drawn, the acting for the most part is mediocre at best, and the endless action just feels too much like a hammer to the brain. I didn't set out to hate this movie, but by the end I had no choice. I contemplated leaving halfway through, but decide to stay like I always do. I stayed in my seat, unfortunately. Congratulations Wolfman, you are no longer the worst film of the year so far.

D+