I feel that before I start talking about Joe Carnahan's re-make of the 1980's TV series The A-Team, I state that I'm not opposed to fun action movies that don't make a whole lot of sense. I enjoyed Carnahan's Smokin' Aces from a few years ago even, and that's a movie that was universally panned. Earlier this year, I very much enjoyed The Losers despite the movie's warts. So with that understanding in mind, I have to be honest. I hated The A-Team. Not because the movie was terrible on its own. It certainly wasn't as bad as Clash of the Titans or Robin Hood were. I hated it because of what it represented, and the ways in which it failed. I hated it because, in a year that's been littered with movies that are thinly veiled cash grabs using name recognition to bring in moviegoers, this might have been the most blatant. I hated it because it's yet another shaky-cam movie when it would've been a much more effective movie without it. Most of all though, I hated it because somewhere in this smoldering pile of celluloid, there was a damn entertaining movie.
I won't spend long on the plot, because if you did happen to see The Losers earlier this year (and judging by box office receipts, not many of you did), you already know it. Hell, if you saw a trailer for it, you already know what happens. A team of Army Rangers led by Col John "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson) and including Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck (Bradley Cooper), Capt. James "Howling Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley), and Cpl. Bosco "B.A." Baracus (Quinton Jackson) are framed for a crime that they didn't commit. After they break out of military prison, they try to clear their names by proving their innocence, even though they've now technically broken the law by breaking out of prison. Helping them is a CIA agent known only as Lynch (Patrick Wilson). Meanwhile, Face's ex-girlfriend, Capt. Charisa Sosa (Jessica Biel) is trying to chase them down and get them back behind bars.
This movie does have things going for it, before I get too deep into my complaints. I can't say that the dialogue isn't fun, that some of the action is just preposterous enough to cross into the same territory that the original The Transporter movie resided in, and that some of the set pieces aren't really interesting and engaging. I talk a lot about chemistry between actors in my reviews and that's because I really feel that a movie can't make it to the finish line without the actors playing well off of each other. Bad chemistry can wreck a good movie. Good chemistry can save a bad one. In The A-Team's case, much of what it has going for it is the chemistry between three of the four A-Team members. Neeson and Cooper really do a fantastic job with their characters, and Cooper really comes off as the star of the film after a while. I generally liked his character, even when I didn't want to very much. I enjoyed the father-son relationship between Hannibal and Face that the original show hinted at, but the film really cemented. I enjoyed the deranged energy that Copley brought to the Murdock character, even if some of his antics wore thin and even if his accent wandered back and forth between a southern accent and a South African accent. I enjoyed working those three characters work together. The TV series featured plans that were completely ridiculous and relied on many, many moving parts coming together at the right moments, almost completely by chance. I loved seeing them on grander stages in this film. I loved how Carnahan had Hannibal voice over the plan while we saw it take place. There were really good building blocks here, and they could have been constructed in a way that really made this movie pay off.
Sadly, The A-Team takes those building blocks and tosses them randomly about a room. Much of the action doesn't connect at all to other action scenes. And action scenes that should be awesome are ruined by Carnahan's decision to film from an up-close point of view with the camera shaking like you're standing there in the explosion/fist fight/tank trying to land itself after falling out of an airplane. Done well, that point of view can be effective. It added a fantastic dimension to a movie like Cloverfield. As I mentioned, The A-Team is a movie that sets-up a lot of completely ridiculous plans that require things to happen at precise moments, like a giant Rube Goldberg machine. Filming those action scenes up-close takes away from the complexity of what's going on around it, and it leads to a sense of disorientation. It's hard to keep track of who is where in some of the larger action set-pieces, and especially during the finale. In other movies, that would simply be annoying. In The A-Team, it completely destroys the tone and purpose of those action scenes. This isn't a Bourne movie. There's very little hand-to-hand combat. There's no point in filming the movie that way.
I mentioned the three characters that had a great deal of chemistry together, and I purposely left out B.A. That's because, and I can't stress this enough, Quinton Jackson is terrible as Baracus. I never thought I would experience the day in which I openly pined for Mr. T to tag in and take over a role. But there I was, sitting in a movie theater, wishing for Jackson to go away and bring back Mr. T. Jackson's Baracus doesn't have any substance to him. He's played with virtually the same expression throughout the proceedings. His character is the one that doesn't really have a defined role in the group. He's supposed to be the muscle, but he spends half of the film committing to non-violence. Why on earth would you take the most "bad ass" character in a completely over-the-top action film and make him a pacifist for a third of the movie? In what universe does that make sense?
I really can't write about this without getting more frustrated. The A-Team is one of those movies that is completely infuriating if you spend even a half-second thinking about anything beyond whatever's happening on screen at that very second. Don't try to connect the dots. Don't try to figure out where people are. Don't try to figure out why Carnahan couldn't keep a camera steady. Just smile at the screen, maybe zone out for a while, ooh and ahh at the explosions and crazy sequences (like the falling tank), and let everything else go. If you can do that, there might be a movie in here somewhere for you. If you can't, this movie is only going to make you angry that it exists at all.