The Case for Alpha Males

It was big and stupid. “Well laid plans” relied on so much coincidence and suspension of disbelief that these people could have caught Osama in a few hours. Some of the action sequences were so ludicrous that not even digital effects by WETA could make them look realistic. And, boy, was it heaps of fun.

The A Team, on the run for a crime they didn’t commit, is a really good big screen interpretation of a small screen TV classic. Icons from the original – the van, Mr T’s haircut, the lack of swearing and (for the most part) blood, and liberal uses of the recognisable theme tune – are all used to great effect here, though modern sensibilities run through in the shady CIA agents (rather than rogue elements in military command; can’t criticise the men in action these days) and the one female character now able to stand toe to toe with the men in a fight.

The cast is well chosen. I am not a fan of Liam Neeson’s American accent, but he is commanding and charismatic as Hannibal. Quinton Jackson playing B A Baracus is certainly big and tough enough, though his distinct lack of bling shows that there is no replacing Mr T. Bradley Cooper plays ladies’ man Face as swaggering rather than the cool charming Dirk Benedict of the TV series, but then that just means he is more believable as a hardened army veteran. And finally, District 9’s Sharlto Copley as Murdoch steals the character show, much like Dwight Shultz did in the TV series, even getting to employ his gold old South African accent a couple of times.

As these characters are fairly established in the minds of those who know the TV show, the actors don’t have to do a lot of work here, but the fact that they do tweak them a bit, modernise them, and make them their own is what really makes the movie work. The assorted baddies and goodies both helping and plotting against them are all fairly two dimensional, though they are given a little bit of personality to make them at least interesting. The A Team, of course, are completely two dimensional – as they should be.

Of course, the actors are given a long time to make the characters theirs, as the film is over two hours long. But, chock full of action sequences and set pieces and some of the most well timed transfers between types of transport imaginable, the time just seemed to fly by, and every person who accompanied me to this film sang its praises – figuratively of course, as this was not a musical episode of a movie outing.

Verdict: A short and sweet review for what is a long but sweet film. As the Fonz would say, the A Team movie definitely deserves an Ayyyyyy.