On DVD: The A-Team

Liam Neeson hasn't grinned on film since -- well, hell, he's never grinned. And that, says Kimberly Gadette, might be all we need by way of a lure to check out this latest attempt to mine movie gold from a long-buried TV series.

The codger huddles near his relic of a TV, warming his gnarled hands by the light of the electron beams firing from the flickering cathode ray tube. "In the good old days," he wheezes, "movies inspired television shows. Not the other way around." His liver-spotted head shakes in sorrow. "So many of my friends killed off by the movies: The Avengers, Bewitched, The Incredible Hulk, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Wild Wild West, X-Files ... and now The A-Team. It's series-cide, that's what it is. I'd call in Gunsmoke's Marshall Dillon, but I hear that he, too ...," he chokes on his horror, "has been captured." (Note: The film version of Gunsmoke is currently in pre-production.)

But first, a word from our sponsors. Based on an '80s television action show, a team of American Special Forces soldiers are framed for a crime they didn't commit. As opposed to the TV series' Vietnam vets accused of wrongdoing in Hanoi, this gang is stationed in Iraq, and their supposed crime entails capturing counterfeit US currency and engraving plates. The four lead characters remain the same: Hannibal, the stogie-smoking leader (Liam Neeson), Face, the ladies' man who can charm his way around any difficult situation (Bradley Cooper), B.A., the undisputed brawn (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson) and "Howlin' Mad" Murdock, the ace pilot who may or may not be insane (Sharlto Copley). Though they're soon court-martialed and dispatched to four separate prisons ... nothing stops the A-Team when they've got a plan.

To bastardize Pirandello, rather than six characters in search of a play, we've got four characters in search of a script. While the men are marvelously colorful, their camaraderie jumping off the screen, the story is messier than the resultant debris from any of the film's frequent explosions. And it's no wonder: according to Deadline Hollywood, eleven screenwriters took turns on this project, which was bogged down for nearly ten years. The overseeing studio couldn't decide on a tone – gritty? political? violent? wacky? humorless? – and no surprise, the result is a smorgasbord of everything and nothing at all.

Even so, the movie occasionally hits its target. Such as when the team members break each other out of prison (particularly the last scheme that frees Murdock); some clever camera work in a phone booth; B.A. sliding down the side of the building; a tank that propels itself through the air by firing off ammunition (borrowed from Wall*E's waltz in outer space?) and Hannibal detailing a plan of action, using props as visual aids, intercut with scenes executing that same plan in real time.

But these few successful strikes can't carry the whole. Other than a moronic third act, the near dozen screenwriters forgot to give Hannibal a character aside from showing us his passion for cigars. (Freud might have said that that was all he needed.) Jessica Biel's Captain Sosa, playing Face's ex-lover/relentless pursuer hot on the A-Team's tail, is an annoyance – though she's known Face intimately for years, it never occurs to her that he may have been wrongly accused. And then there's the mysterious CIA agent Lynch (Patrick Wilson, doing his best to intrigue). For some inexplicable reason, the writers frequently throw in lines about the fact that the name "Lynch" is suspicious – but they never quite manage to make their point.

Speaking of points, when Murdock produces a curry tapenade with warm toast points to appease unwilling flight passenger B.A., it's a bit of a reach – particularly since the team has just jumped onto a fighter plane in order to carry out their most dangerous mission yet. Was star chef Wolfgang Puck chained to the galley off-camera?

And while mixed martial artist Jackson does his best to make the part of B.A. Baracas his own, pity the fool who has to follow in Mr. T's supersized footsteps. Note to Mr. Jackson: next time, hire a decent diction coach. A dramatic scene in which he wrestles with violence (pun unintended) is nearly unintelligible.

However, both Cooper and Copley storm the movie by force and never let up. Cooper is even more charismatic here than in his earlier work in The Hangover, while Copley exhibits a superb off-kilter comic persona. Between this comedic tour de force and his considerable dramatic talent as showcased in District 9, Copley's future acting career is all but certain.

Perhaps if the eleven writers had been traded for one who had both vision and talent; perhaps if the nervous producers had found a style and stuck to it; perhaps if the filmmakers spent more time and money on a comprehensible story instead of more TNT ... oh, why bother. The 1980s' A-Team was fun, commercial television – and blowing it up a thousand-fold, um, simply blows.

Rating on a scale of 5 A-bombs: 2.5

Release date: US: 11 June 2010; UK: 30 July 2010
Directed by: Joe Carnahan
Written by: Joe Carnahan & Brian Bloom and Skip Woods
Based on the television series by: Frank Lupo & Stephen J. Cannell
Cast: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Patrick Wilson, Gerald McRaney, Henry Czerny, Brian Bloom
Rating: US = PG; UK = 12A
Running time: 118 minutes