The A-Team

THE TEAM THAT MEANS ACTION, BUT CRITICS DISAGREE

While my guru Roger Ebert calls The ATeam an incomprehensible mess with the 1980s TV show embedded inside, and then uses examples, “I found my attention wandering to the subject of physics. The ATeam has an action scene that admirably demonstrates Newton’s Third Law, which instructs us that for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.

The movie illustrates this as the heroes fall from an exploding airplane while inside an armoured tank. As the tank hurtles to the ground (cf. Newton’s Law of Gravity), the team leader, Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson), looks out an opening and barks out commands for the tank’s gun. I am paraphrasing: ‘Turn 45 degrees to the left! Fire! Twenty-five degrees to the right! Fire!’ In this way, he is able to direct the fall of the tank and save their lives. This is very funny."

But Brian Salisbury says, "Instead of assaulting us with non-stop action and then having the audacity to mask itself as being high art, The A-Team embraces just how ludicrous the action sequences are and makes absolutely no apologies for it.

That's not to say, though, the movie has nothing to offer beyond the explosions and mid-air collisions. In fact, what makes The A-Team such a damn good film is the clever underscore that complements every moment of mesmerising destruction.

Joe Carnahan, along with the other writers, gives us moments that subtly poke fun at the outlandishness of what we are seeing.

Carnahan recognised that, given the tone of both the series and his last film (Smokin' Aces), the action scenes needed to flow uninterrupted, and here it's very streamlined, only pausing briefly to give us hilarious interactions between the larger-than-life characters before diving head-first back into the explosive fray.

Until the very end of the film, each plan is carried out before our eyes as it is being hashed out to neutralise any lacking in the pace. It would be easy to then accuse The A-Team of being frontloaded, given the slow build to the final sequence, but I would argue that is merely a nod to the evolution of Face's character as a leader and that it never really loses steam.

What really sells this film, however, is its cast. Like the original quartet of chaos, each actor brings something fantastic to the table.

Bradley Cooper, as Face, has that inescapably charming swagger and confidence we have come to expect from him; Neeson, unsurprisingly, is the perfect blend of inthe-trenches badass and cool-as-ice leader. Even Rampage Jackson, in the role made famous by a guy donning the entire payload of Ft Knox around his neck (that’d be Mr T), turns in a respectably tough performance with a few moments of decent hubris. But it’s Sharlto Copley who really steals the show as Howlin’ Mad Murdock. True to his character’s moniker, Copley cranks up the lunacy and plays Murdock with a hilariously reckless abandon that mirrors the tone of the entire film.” My own opinion and, I am allowed one, is that The ATeam was written by one of my favourite thriller authors, Stephen Cannell whom I dote on who despite dyslexia not only has written hit after hit TV shows but hit after hit books. You are advised not to smoke Hannibal Smith’s cigars or go over the top like Copley or wear a Mohawk like Jackson otherwise have a ball even if you don’t understand what’s going on which I didn’t, sticking to the basic principle of, it moves fast, it’s in colour and lots of thing go boom.