The A-Team

It seems rather obvious that The A-Team has been designed to appeal primarily to 13-year-old boys (or those viewers well in touch with their inner 13-year-old boy), as the film boasts all of the attributes one has come to expect from big-budget summer fare – with the ongoing emphasis on over-the-top, special-effects-heavy set-pieces certainly standing as clear evidence of this. It is, as a result, not surprising to note that the movie fares best in its quieter moments, as the (admittedly hackneyed) banter between the four leads is preferable to the almost uniformly underwhelming action sequences. Based on the popular ’80s television series, The A-Team follows the title mercenaries (Liam Neeson’s Hannibal, Bradley Cooper’s Face, Sharlto Copley’s Murdock, and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s B.A. Baracus) as they attempt to clear their names after a mysterious figure frames them for a high-profile murder and theft. Director Joe Carnahan has infused the proceedings with an aggressively frenetic visual sensibility that’s inevitably more of a hindrance than anything else, with the filmmaker’s reliance on shaky camerawork and rapid-fire editing ensuring that the movie’s overtly high-octane moments are effectively drained of their energy. The watchable atmosphere is subsequently (and primarily) perpetuated by the likeable nature of the performances, as the palpable chemistry between the film’s stars compensates for the familiarity of their respective characters (eg the smooth, sarcastic ladies man, the tough-as-nails badass, the no-nonsense leader, etc). The cavalcade of familiar faces within the supporting cast, including Patrick Wilson, Henry Czerny, and Brian Bloom, cements the film’s affable yet uninvolving atmosphere, with Carnahan’s decision to stress the will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic between Cooper’s Face and Jessica Biel’s Sosa standing as the most prominent character-based misstep within the narrative (ie who cares, really?) By the time the unwieldy, virtually incoherent finale rolls around, The A-Team has established itself as a thoroughly (and unapologetically) larger-than-life endeavor that ultimately fares just about as well as one might’ve anticipated.

**1/2 out of ****