REVIEW: THE A-TEAM
QUINTESSENTIAL 1980s TV show THE A-TEAM (12A) gets the big screen treatment - but despite some tricky editing and big explosions, the plan never quite comes together for director Joe Carnahan.
At best, this is guilty pleasure cinema. It's fast and furious but the plot falls on the wrong side of coherent and it's just unspectacular enough for you have forgotten everything about it by the time you've left the cinema.
Updated to make the team Iraq veterans, the film covers that "soldiers of fortune" voiceover bit from the show as Hannibal (Liam Neeson), Face (Bradley Cooper), BA (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson) and Murdock (Sharlto Copley) are framed for a crime they didn't commit, break out of their maximum security prisons and take on the villains while avoiding the military police.
Carnahan goes to some trouble to create massive action set pieces - a ridiculous air battle involving a tank and blowing up a docked tanker for example - but when the dust settles, he struggles to give the cast anything interesting to say. Neeson, for example, just growls his lines while Jackson's BA is an uncharismatic version of Mr T.
Children of the 80s will get a small kick out of the big budget nostalgia but this is far from A grade thrills. - JUSTIN MATLOCK
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