It seems as the Hollywood has found a gold mine in the entertainment of the 80's. With the success of such films as the Transformers and GI Joe franchises and now we are seeing films like the A-Team, The Karate Kid and Red Dawn (assuming MGM can find the money to release it), they are tapping some of our favorite toy lines, television series and now films. But it doesn't always mean it's going to be a good movie. One just needs to watch GI Joe or Revenge of the Fallen to see proof of that. So when I first read about the A-Team film being made, I couldn't help but laugh this one off, thinking it was going to be a Michael Bay wanna-be film. Then the first trailer came out and all but confirmed that fact. But I was happily surprised to see that I was wrong. It is a fun, well written and very well acted film. It has it's WTF moments, but it's something I can look past due to the sheer entertainment value of the film.
The story is written in pure A-Team fashion, with lots of stuff blowing up and plans coming together. The introduction of the team is fun and well done and it gives you a fast yet informative introduction to each character. The main story follows the Alpha Team, or A-Team, made up by Hannibal, Face, BA and Mad Dog Murdock (Neeson, Cooper, Jackson and Copely, respectively) in their pursuit of a set of money printing plates and the team that framed them, causing them to spend time in prison. Looking to clear their name, they team with unlikely people to get the job done. As I said before, I was surprised at how well the story was written; it was believable for the most part, with the exception of one sequence that was a bit silly, but it was still entertaining to watch. The dialog was good and not overly cheesy.
What surprised me the most was how well the film was acted. With actors the recruited for the film, it shouldn't be too shocking. However, you usually don't see this caliber in an action film based on a corny TV show. Neeson and Cooper were great but there were three people who were awesome to watch: Sharlto Copely, Patrick Wilson and Brian Bloom. They were very entertaining and fun to watch and had some great lines in the film. I want to make a predictions here and now: Sharlto Copely will be an Oscar winner before too long. He is an amazing talent to watch. Patrick Wilson seems to be flying under a lot of people's radars which is a shame, because he is great at what he does and needs to be in more movies! Brian Bloom...he's a voice actor for the most part, doing voice overs for video games mostly, but I think he just had he break out role. He was awesome as the baddie in this flick. As far as Biel and Jackson go, they do pretty well considering who they were on screen with; it could not have been easy!
While I'm talking about acting, I want to go back to Patrick Wilson. If and when you see this film and are watching him on screen, I want you to consider something: Patrick Wilson as The Riddler in the next Bat-film. Now, I would rather not see Riddler in the next installment, but as I was watching this film, that's all I could see when he was on screen. Just a suggestion...
Moving on...The film has some great graphics to pull the film together. Some were rather obvious but for the most part, it was all quite seemless. There are a lot of explosions and fireballs, which is expected in a film like this, but no where near the level of Michael "Kaboom" Bay's films.
If you want to go watch a funny, smart and fun film, go give this one a try. I really enjoyed it and was pleasantly surprised by that fact.
Grade: B