More like the B-Team, fool!
With the 1980s TV show embedded inside it, “The A-Team” is a complete disaster. The characters have the same names, play the same types, have the same traits and are just about as deep as their counterparts in the TV sitcom that was really what this show was but stretched out to punish us for over two hours of Queasy Cam anarchy.
The new style of violent action is showcased in this movie (and countless others), which fragments sequences into so many bits and pieces that it’s impossible to form any sense of what’s happening, or where, or to whom actors appearing in flash frames intercut with shards of CGI amid loud noises and urgent music and many explosions until they all stop, at which point there is some dialogue. Not a lot: a few words, a sentence occasionally even a statement that crosses the finish line at paragraph length.
Here is the plot: Wrongly framed for counterfeiting, our four heroes (all Iraq veterans) bust out of various prisons and go after the engraving plates, which would be pretty much worn out while printing enough $100 bills to pay for the millions in property damage they cause along the way.
Bored out of my mind during this spectacle, I found my attention wandering to physics. “The A-Team” has an action scene that admirably demonstrates Newton’s Third Law: For every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.
In this case, we see illustrated Smith looking out an opening as they fall from an exploding airplane while inside an armored tank: “Turn 45 degrees to the left! Fire! Twenty-five degrees to the right! Fire!” And thus he directs its fall so they don’t die. Very funny.
Also amusing are scenes where everyone has had a glance at the choreography beforehand. Consider one when B.A Baracus comes roaring through air on his motorcycle to wipe out a Talking Killer who, as usual with such people, pauses to sneer and boast when he could just pull the trigger. They’re standing in the middle of a jumble of dozens of freight shipping containers that have been spilled onto a dock. I ask because, as I hinted above, no action in this movie necessarily has any relationship to the actions surrounding it.
There is an annoying ability these characters often possess to precisely predict what will happen and coordinate their response to it:
A slimy double-dealer is about to kill another A-Team member (never mind who), when suddenly behind him a container is lifted into the air, and behind it are revealed all of the other team members lined up in a row, with choice words and brief phrases to say.
I do not mean to be boring, but how did they know the two guys were behind that container exactly? How did they get a crane in there and attach it to the container without anyone hearing them or seeing them? How could they gather the members so fast after all that action chaos and was someone eavesdropping nearby, to give the lift-cue at exactly the right moment? Ten seconds later, and it might’ve been too late. Goodbye! But then again ten seconds earlier, and dialogue would have been stepped on.
Am I being ridiculous? Why is it fun to watch a movie in which the “action” is basically just colorful abstraction? Isn’t it more satisfying if you know where everyone is, and what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it in real time? In other words: isn’t The Hurt Locker more interesting than The A-Team?
To its credit, this movie knows it’s stupid. PG-13 seems about right. There’s almost no actual gore; no sex beyond a chaste kiss; no R-rated language but ohmigod there’s smoking! Alert for pre-teens: Try one of those fat cigars Hannibal smokes, and you won’t feel like eating dinner.
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