The Plan Comes Together: The A-Team Rocks

“Overkill is underrated.” – Liam Neeson as Col. John “Hannibal” Smith in Joe Carnahan’s The A-Team.

My wife understands the need for the guys’ night out. Once in a blue moon some friends and I will sit in an underfurnished basement, play low-stakes poker, drink too much domestic beer and laugh til we ache from jokes made at one another’s expense. I am having a really rough time thinking of a movie that captures this particular, peculiar joy better than The A-Team.

The frenzied adolescent clay from which Joe Carnahan has always molded his films finds its perfect subject in the story of four Special Forces supermen who scoff at death, physics and common sense in order to get the job done. I would never call myself a devotee of the 1980s series, but I pity the fool who has no awareness of the vanned vigilantes who make elaborate plans with equal parts cunning, suavity, might and insanity. The titular team of Hannibal, Face, B.A. and Murdock are each cool enough for their own movies – part of the reason The A-Team is bursting at the seams with fun.

The main reason for The A-Team’s success, though, is just how much Joe Carnahan gets it. Why waste time with exposition when you can show the Team in action? Why not ensure that every moment, every stinking moment, is shot with full-throttle energy, with lines delivered at the top of an actor’s lungs, with as much stuff exploding as possible? If Murdock is going to cook a steak, why not have him pour the powder from a shotgun shell on the grill, ignite it, and have Face demand, “Burn it like it’s damned!”?

You’ve heard it one hundred thousand times, but it is worth repeating: action sequences, no matter how cool, only go so far when you don’t care about the characters. All four of the actors in The A-Team (Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Sharlto Copley) bring such titanic levels of awesome to their roles that they turn a scene about flying a tank under enemy fire into four of your best buddies flying a tank under enemy fire.  This is what Michael Bay doesn't understand, which is why I enjoyed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in quotes, but felt truly engaged and involved in The A-Team.

“You can’t fly a tank, fool!” shouts Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, and it is just one of one hundred moments of silliness that’ll have you high-fiving the guy in the seat next to you. Even the villain, played wonderfully by Patrick Wilson, mutters “that’s awesome” from time to time.

The words “fool” and “plan” are repeated like a mantra, as if Carnahan and his writers were daring one another to see how much fan service they could fit in without having the film explode. As a lover of deep-cut Easter eggs, Carnahan has thrown down the gauntlet and raised the bar with one so hardcore (and one I can’t in good conscious spoil) that it makes last summer’s “Ceti Eel” in Star Trek look like a joke.

The added touches aren’t just nerd winks, though – the entire film is covered in a mist of little touches that make it clear no one on this picture wanted to phone in another forgettable summer action pic. Steely Dan ringtone? Bring it!

Can you tell I loved The A-Team? It’s a movie so imbued in fun even its flaws, like the sub-Soap Opera performance from Jessica “I Look Hot In Sunglasses” Biel, somehow become endearing. It’s as if Hannibal meant it that way. I love it when a plan comes together.