To be fair, I actually kind of enjoyed the beginning where they set up the new versions of the characters which I spent a good portion of my childhood emulating. Sure they were a little off from the originals, but the basic templates werestill there. Liam Neeson made a decent enough Hannibal: the brilliant, cigar smoking leader and Bradley Cooper was at least good looking enough to be Face if not nearly whiny enough. I thought it was Luke Wilson playing old crazy ass Murdock, but it was actually SharltoCopley, the lead character from District 9. While not as charmingly nutso as the Dwight Schultz (the original Murdock), Copley was okay. As for B.A. Baracas, well nobody can really be B.A. except for Mr.T, but I guess Rampage does a decent job at playing the big tough dude who is afraid of flying even if he was not wearing the appropriate amount of bling.
Apparently I missed the beginning, where they all meet in Mexico for the first time, but I started watching in time to catch the basic set up. The A-Team, is a special army task force with a penchant for destroying things without killing people, that goes on a secret (wink, wink) mission to capture some printing plates that are in the hands of the Iraqis. The plan goes off without a hitch, except for the part where the General gets blown up, the plates get stolen and everything is pinned on them.The four get sent off to various military prisons around the country until a CIA spook played by Patrick Wilson hatches a plan with Hannibal to get them all out to get the plates back.
I know I should have just given up and turned it off after the whole "Flying Tank " scene, but I was compelled to keep watching to make sure that it was going to end as retardly as I thought it was and to see if my hero, Mr. T, was going to make a cameo like the the the original Face and Murdock did during the prison escape scenes. At the very least, I was hoping that Jessica Biel who was playing a DOD agent/love interest was going to finally show us a little skin. Unfortunately, neither of these happened, and the plot just continued to become more confusing and convoluted like it was written by J.J. Abrams after a crack binge. The whole complex shell game aspect of the final plan (hatched by Face for some stupid fucking reason) tried to be smarter than it really was and even after several more bong hits and a bottle of beer, I still could not suspend my disbelief enough to not roll my eyes at the inevitable outcome.
Here are some problems I had:
1: B.A. is afraid to fly yet he has no problem rappelling down a 50 story building.
2: What the fuck happened to the plane they flew to the cargo ship? Did they just abandon it?
3:Where the fuck is the crew of the Cargo Ship? Who is steering the fucking thing?
4: Why is Face doing all the Stratergy? His job is to look pretty not plan, that is why he is called Face. Let the dude named after one of History's most brilliant military tacticians come up with the plan. In fact, this is my biggest problem with the movie. It is like they felt they had to cater to Mr.Hollywood Cooper by giving his character a more important role then he deserved.
5.What wrong with Jessica Beil? Why can't she find any good movies to be in? Perhaps God is not through with punishing her for abandoning Seventh Heaven. .
6.Why are people dying? People do not die at the hands of the A-Team. Shit just get blown the fuck up and the bad guys jump out of the way before it does.
I pity the fool who did not have the chance to grow up with television during the 80's. Those were the the Golden Years my friend and the A-Team, with its glorification of violence and conservative values, was right smack in the middle of it.It was the epitome of the Cold War, where stuff gets blown up but no white people got hurt. To take these characters and to throw them into a story line involving rogue CIA agents, a complicated money laundering scheme and Jessica Biel is blasphemy.
Origin Story
Of course, all the violence and complicated plot twists and turns can explained away by the fact that this is supposed to be a Origins story. All this is supposed to take place before the A-Team became a ragtag team of paramilitary misfits who roamed the country helping grandmothers and such who are being victimized by gangs of truck driving rednecks. That is fair, I suppose. However, if they ever make a sequel, it better include some nuns, some orphans, a greedy politician, a lawnmower turned into a catapult, and Hannibal better be making all the plans. Also, for the sake of fuck, find a way to get Mr.T to make a cameo. pr, at least put some bling on Rampage Jackson.
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