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The A-Team


What it's about:

A crack Army Rangers unit is framed for the theft of plates used in money production. Determined to clear their names, they plot an escape from military incarceration and hatch a plan to bring the real perpetrators down.

What we thought:

The A-Team is one of the most lovingly remembered TV series from the 80s, surpassing even MacGyver and Magnum P.I. in that regard. It was one of the biggest-budget series commissioned at the time, but it also had its tongue quite firmly in cheek for most of its admittedly hokely-premised (and now badly dated) episodes.

Still, it's a big ask to bring all that into cinema some 20-odd years later. Do you go for a nostalgia trip, or do you try to bring new audiences to your "franchise"? Director Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces) does the clearly insane and attempts to go both ways at once.

The A-Team is not going to open new avenues of cinematic insight. But in a cinema age where directors with gigantic budgets can produce action crap-taculars like Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen or Knight and Day, you really have to love an action movie that can at least make you feel good about most of what it offers.

You almost won't mind the occasionally dodgy CGI, or the hilariously unlikely action scenes. Or even the endless montage-esque editing style (it's like the whole movie is a build-shit-out-of-spare-dialogue sequence).

Nope you won't mind at all, because the actors seem to be having an illegal amount of fun hamming up the action and mugging for the camera, and nobody else in the cast really needs to do much more than let the movie happen around them - which, in the case of The A-Team, works like a charm. It's a chuckle-a-minute nod to old quirks and idiosyncrasies, and it's a bullet train of high-octane action, speed-of-light editing and big explosions.

South Africans will especially love a brief scene in which local boy done very good Sharlto Copley channels The Sweetie Man, and Neeson is surprisingly watchable in the late George Peppard's signature role. Also, original A-Teamers Dwight Schultz (Murdock) and Dirk Benedict (Face) have cameos so brief, you'll likely blink at the wrong moment and miss them completely. 

Though your experience of the movie will vary widely, depending on where you are in the world and probably how old you are, South Africans are not going to find a more fun two hours at the cinema this winter season. And much of that is due to Copley who injects a wild, infectiously charming air of insanity to it all. Unlike his more established co-stars, Copley is bound to benefit infinitely from his work here. He is a scene-stealer, and this is only his second film role.

So just like its protagonists, despite the odds stacked against it and the clear opportunities for dismal failure, The A-Team is a miraculous winner. The plan, it seems, has indeed come together.
 
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