The A-Team deserves only a B

The A-Team
Directed by: Joe Carnahan
Starring: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Sharlto Copley
Written by: Joe Carnahan, Brian Bloom, Skip Woods

The Summer has finally spawned a mindlessly fun actioner in The A-Team. It has the right amount of explosions (both on the ground and in the air), right duration, and a charming cast to keep us involved. To ensure utmost enjoyment, please check your brains at the door; we don’t wanna try to figure out how can a US Army Ranger drive a Gallardo around in Mexico, or how another Ranger manages to barrel-roll a chopper because the more we try to be a smart-ass, the more we’ll be unable to follow the frenetic action scenes. Nevertheless, even after leaving my brains outside, I still spotted some incredibly preposterous plots that became a distraction. The story is dumb, but the screenwriters seemed to be trying real hard to come up with clever plots.

The A-Team boasts some ingenious action scenes, most notably the “flying tank” scene. The movie, however, is equally mired by incomprehensible sequences due to choppy editing. The comedy is pretty juvenile but still managed to draw several laughs from the audience. I wasn’t born yet when the TV show was aired and so I think old fans of the show would find this movie more amusing and entertaining.

The main problem of this movie is that the final act could not really top up the movie that had been filled with some spectacles worthy of the ticket price; the climax felt worn-out and redundant. Transformers 2 faced a very similar problem: compare the forest fight scene with the desert battle. Despite this, The A-Team will shift the still-slow summer up a gear with its charm and lightheartedness.

My Rating: 6/10