Aaaand cut. Because that's all you get. This is an origin movie, soldier, and that means we need to spend nearly two hours explaining and showing something that the original series explained perfectly adequately in a 23 second voiceover. I swear, they're going to make a Magnum PI movie next, and he'll grow a moustache in the last ten minutes, and get given a Ferrari during the closing credits. Fucking origin movies.
Still, this isn't as bad as the likes of Spider-Man where he don't even get bit by a radioactive spider until we're half an hour in, and doesn't put his costume on until well after the halfway mark. We have to sit through what The A Team used to do before they became the A Team, but since that appears to have been Pull Outrageous Shit With A Range Of Improvised Equipment And Even More Improvised Plans, that's kind of ok.
So, anyway, this is a series of crazy sequences, each of which advances the A Team agenda somewhat, each of which is basically more explosilicious than the last. The sequences are quite fun, and give the distinct impression that the team survive as much on dumb luck as good planning. This worried me initially, until I remembered that was pretty much how the series went.
The talent's a mixed bag. I liked Liam Neeson, but didn't feel that he was baiting sleazeballs anywhere near as gleefully as George Peppard used to. Bradley Cooper's pretty good as Face, though he's more Hannibal's reckless protege than the team's conman. Quinton Jackson's quite likable, but I don't really feel that I pity the fool* who messes with him. Sharlto Copley - well, he's ok, but he's not Dwight Schultz. The bad guys are quite fun; it'd be easy to give the heroes all the good lines and make the bad guys straight faced boobs who are only there to have custard pies thrown in their faces, but these guys bicker, banter and wisecrack their way through it, so in that way, the film's nicely balanced. Oh, and Jessica Biel's in it, but she's too pretty to have a sense of humour.
Overall... Well, I guess it feels like a classic car from the 80s, rebuilt, with almost every important part replaced with Unipart spares. Looks right, doesn't really sound or feel right. You can claim you're driving an '82 Pontiac Firebird, but in your heart, you know you're not. So, having said that they failed to recapture the magic - and to be fair, the original series pretty much failed to recapture the magic after season 3 - the question is, does it stand up as a film if you remove the brand name logos?
Well, it's not bad, in fact it's pretty good. For me the standout bit was Brian Bloom as the CIA badass killer, Pike. And a formidable bad guy is really what you need in a film like this. Overall, though, I stand by my prediction that The Losers got in quick, and stole the thunder of this movie out from under them before they even got started.
* oh yes, and someone tell them that "I Pity The Fool" is Rocky III.
