Review: The A-Team

It seems recently a lot of popular brands have presented almost prequel films to start the story once again. In many cases this would've been to refresh an ailing franchise - Batman Begins, Casino Royale, the most recent Star Trek film or tell alledgelly retell a well known legend - Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. This trend is continued with the new A-Team film in which we find out how Murdoch, B.A., Face and Hannibal all first met, why they were locked up for a crime they didn't commit and most importantly why B.A. 'ain't getting on no plane'. The story itself involves U.S. treasury plates, a double-crossing CIA agent and Jessica Biel trying to convince us that she's a Captain. But that's not really the point of the film its about the four characters and how much we care about what they're doing. As Hannibal, Liam Neeson does get the leadership thing right and is quite compelling in some parts but the problem is that Nesson tries to hard to do a growly voice and therefore you miss most of what he's saying. Bradley Cooper is basically just a smile and some hair as Face he doesn't have the charm that Dirk Benedict had in the original and is reduced to a couple of smarmy lines. Fairing better is District 9's Sharlto Copley who steals all the scenes as Murdoch, he gets the crazy look in his eye and you do believe that he was in an insane asylum. However the biggest problem is Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson as B.A. Baracus. There's nothing particularly wrong with Jackson's performance, for his first acting role its decent enough but there's only one person that can play B.A. and that's Mr. T and there's no covering that up.

The main problem I have is that the film loses its sense of fun about half way through. It starts quite light, with a few jokes, the same old catchphrases and some explosions. But after the boys are jailed it all gets a bit serious and the film gets shot with some moody lighting for about twenty minutes. There's also a major problem with the way some of the sound is recorded and you do miss some of what the characters say. At the end of the day this film starts fun and is fairly enjoyable when you watch it but it does try a bit too hard to be something it's not. But at least know this is in cinemas we don't have to put up with Liam Neeson saying 'I Love it when a Talk Plan Comes Together' every time we got to the cinema.