  The A-Team (left to right): Bradley Cooper as Templeton "Face" Peck; UFC light heavyweight Quinton "Rampage" Jackson as B.A. Baracas; Sharlto Copley as H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock; and Liam Neeson as Col Hannibal Smith.
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In a summer that’s had some movies based on old TV shows and others based on old video games, The A-Team has all the bases covered — it’s an old TV show that’s been turned into an old video game on the big screen.
What a creative twist!
It’s unlikely there will be a bigger disappointment this blockbuster season.
The A-Team is an incomprehensible jumble of stunts, romance and absolute nonsense, with a plot that makes no sense and action sequences edited with the sort of bluster that ensures you can’t see what the heck is going on.
The story opens in Mexico. Liam Neeson has just been beaten up by bad guys — or so it would appear — but he’s too smart for the villains. After he escapes, we move elsewhere in Mexico to find Bradley Cooper being held captive by other bad guys. Liam Neeson is going to rescue Bradley Cooper, but first, he’s going to stop a van, shoot the driver, befriend the guy he’s just shot (who turns out to be Quinton Jackson, the Mr. T. character in the film), get him to be part of the A-Team, bust another guy out of a psych hospital and then everyone is going to escape by helicopter. Or something. This is just what happens while the opening credits roll, a sort of 20-minute opening movie before the real movie begins.
Now it’s eight years later, and we’re in Iraq. There’s some kind of mission involving millions of counterfeit American dollars and the plates to make even more counterfeit American dollars, and the A-Team takes on the impossible task of grabbing the loot and the plates. The CIA (specifically Patrick Wilson) is involved and so are the American Armed Forces — Jessica Biel is a captain and she shows up long enough to beg Bradley Cooper not to take part in any U.S. currency mission — but the A-Team has to do what the A-Team has to do. It’s a mission filled with all kinds of action and stunts, but it’s never exhilarating. It’s never engaging. It’s never quite believable in any way. That’s bad, people.
Anyway, then things go wrong, and the A-Team goes to prison.
Then the A-Team has to bust out of prison to once again find the counterfeit plates. Or maybe the plates are real, and only the money they print is bogus (we’d already lost interest). By the time Bradley Cooper grabs Jessica Biel for some sweet-talk in the middle of a dangerous operation, we sort of gave up hope.
The A-Team goes on and on and on, with a grand finale that involves a lot of talking in advance and just the sort of special effects that look so crappy, you think you’re watching a video game.
There’s really only one scene in the movie that crackles with tension, and none of the big stars are in it: actors Brian Bloom and Patrick Wilson argue in a car about who is going to shoot whom. It’s quick, it’s scary and the actors make you forget you’re watching a movie.
The rest of the time you’d need a real A-Team to assist with the toughest mission of all: The willing suspension of disbelief. Pity the fool who drops $12.50 on this one.
(This film is rated PG)
liz.braun@sunmedia.ca
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