A group of Iraq War veterans look to clear their name with the U.S. Military, who suspect the four men of committing a crime for which they were framed.
See the trailers we loved this week, including a peak at Season 3 of "Westworld," and the latest Netflix rom-com Always Be My Maybe. Presented by Microsoft Surface.
When his peaceful life is threatened by a high-tech assassin, former black-ops Agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) reassembles his old team in a last ditch effort to survive and uncover his assailants.
A retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.
Retired C.I.A. Agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) reunites his unlikely team of elite operatives for a global quest to track down a missing portable nuclear device.
Ex-government operative Bryan Mills is accused of a ruthless murder he never committed or witnessed. As he is tracked and pursued, Mills brings out his particular set of skills to find the true killer and clear his name.
While on a tour of the White House with his young daughter, a Capitol policeman springs into action to save his child and protect the president from a heavily armed group of paramilitary invaders.
Disgraced Secret Service agent (and former presidential guard) Mike Banning finds himself trapped inside the White House in the wake of a terrorist attack; using his inside knowledge, Banning works with national security to rescue the President from his kidnappers.
Director:
Antoine Fuqua
Stars:
Gerard Butler,
Aaron Eckhart,
Morgan Freeman
A man awakens from a coma, only to discover that someone has taken on his identity and that no one, (not even his wife), believes him. With the help of a young woman, he sets out to prove who he is.
After their plane crashes in Alaska, six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman to survival, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step.
An air marshal springs into action during a transatlantic flight after receiving a series of text messages demanding $150 million into an off-shore account, or someone will die every 20 minutes.
Four American soldiers who are in Iraq are sent on a mission to recover plates for printing 100 dollar bills that were used to print a billion dollars. After doing the job and returning to the base their commanding officer is killed in an explosion and the plates are stolen by another operative. They would be court martialed and sent to different prisons. 6 months later, the leader, Hannibal Smith is visited by a CIA spook who tells him he knows where the man who took the plates is and wants him and his men to recover it. So he helps him escape and he breaks out the others and they go after the plates. But after doing it, they discover that the spook might not be ok. And a military intelligence officer who was involved with one of them is pursuing them.Written by
rcs0411@yahoo.com
On the three occasions that subtitles appear in the film (the Mexicans, the German couple, Face screaming in German), they are in different fonts. See more »
Goofs
All of the German car number plates starting F- for Frankfurt/Main were followed by numbers only. This sequence is reserved for official use only (ie. fire brigade). The correct sequence is F-letter (letter) numbers. See more »
Quotes
Capt. Charisa Sosa:
[Lynch taking Pike out of her custody]
Sorry, Pike. At least with me there are rules.
Lynch:
CIAs got rules. Our rules are just cooler than yours.
See more »
Crazy Credits
The The A-Team (1983) theme song plays at the end of the closing credits. See more »
Alternate Versions
UK theatrical version was cut to achieve a "12A" rating. See more »
If any film demands to be graded on a curve, it's The A-Team.
Simply consider the notion of making a big-budget summer movie from of one of the cheesiest television shows of a cheesy TV era.
It's a crafty plan to lower your expectations. As long the movie isn't two hours of punching grandmothers and kicking puppies, you're likely to leave the theater saying, "That was better than I expected."
Guess what? It works like a charm.
The A-Team, against all odds, is one extremely entertaining film. It puts pedal to metal about 90 seconds in and never lets up. That's also savvy because it's also kind of a mess that would collapse under its own weight if it slowed down for more than two minutes.
Director Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces, Narc) isn't taking that chance. Action scenes come flying at you hard and heavy from start to finish. The results are mixed: Some sequences are choppy and confusing, others thrilling. But like a comedy that never stops pitching jokes, content if only half of them stick, The A-Team pitches action, action, action, with a side of action and a little action to wash it down.
The plot follows the general concept of the TV series with a few tweaks. A (very) lengthy credits sequence set in Mexico shows us how the team of former Army Rangers comes together: Leader John "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson), his right-hand man Templeton "Face" Peck (Bradley Cooper), powerful Bosco "B.A." Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson) and loony pilot James "Howling Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley).
We jump ahead several years, where the A-Team is now an Army covert operations crew with dozens of successful missions under their belts. But when they're set up for a fall by a variety of villainous forces, the boys have to break out of jail and fight to clear their names.
That's pretty much all you wanted to know about the plot, right? Because it gets pretty confusing from there and doesn't matter in the slightest anyway. It's only there to support – that's right – action.
Before I tell you why A-Team is worth your hard-earned cash, I should lay out its many faults.
Though Carnahan directed, it's not surprising to see director Tony Scott was one of the producers. Too many scenes evince Scott's "look" – the camera shoved in way too tight on the actors, so you can't tell what the hell's going on in fight scenes or big gun battles.
The special effects are wildly uneven too, especially in the climax. It looks like the usual Hollywood problem of the CGI being "just good enough" to make a locked-in release date. This time, it's nowhere near good enough.
But then, The A-Team is a nitpicker's dream, if you really want to go there. Jessica Biel's casting seems like an inside joke – "we're not taking this seriously, and neither should you, so let's cast a gorgeous but astonishingly wooden actor in this role."
Maybe you're wondering whether she's really that bad. Look at it this way: This is the first major film role for "Rampage" Jackson, an MMA fighter. He's not great, but he's not too bad – and that's high praise for a non-actor stepping into the iconic role. Yet he's a good bit more believable than Biel.
So with those issues, what makes The A-Team so entertaining? The rest of the cast, actually. If you can look past Biel (actually, look right at her, that's what she's there for), the film is jam-packed with colorful, charismatic performances.
Neeson seems a bit odd at first stepping into George Peppard's shoes as Hannibal, being considerably taller, leaner and tougher. But that's appropriate for the movie, which is basically the TV show on (lots and lots of) steroids. No attempt is made to explain his Irish accent, nor that of Copley, who is South African. It doesn't matter: Somehow in this film, it works.
But the film decides early on to focus on Cooper, hot off his success in The Hangover, and it's the right choice. You'd never have guessed the guy who played eighth fiddle on Alias would be front-and-center for a star-making performance, but it's true.
The A-Team shows off Cooper's buffed-up physique almost to the point of absurdity – he's shirtless on screen more than Mark Wahlberg in Date Night – but Cooper's charisma carries the day throughout.
A well-rounded supporting cast also delivers. Patrick Wilson and Brian Bloom, as potentially shady characters related to the A-Team's troubles, steal every scene they're in. (It probably doesn't hurt that Bloom, a veteran actor mostly relegated to TV work, gets co-writing credit.) Their wonderfully brash characters bring welcome levity to the pounding machine of gunfights and explosions that propels The A-Team.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't note the drinking game that by all rights should be born from this film: Drink whenever a guy with icy blue eyes is on screen. You'd pass out halfway through the film.
There's Cooper and Neeson alone, plus Bloom and Wilson, with a little Gerald McRaney – yes, Major Dad himself – thrown in for good measure.
If you're really into dudes with bright blue eyes, The A-Team is like porn. If you're into nonstop action and lots of male bonding, The A-Team is like porn. If you're into deep, fully-realized female characters – well, look elsewhere.
But if you had to ask me what I would want a big-screen take on a really silly TV show to be, The A-Team more than fits the bill. It's ridiculous, sure. But it's also a ridiculous amount of fun.
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If any film demands to be graded on a curve, it's The A-Team.
Simply consider the notion of making a big-budget summer movie from of one of the cheesiest television shows of a cheesy TV era.
It's a crafty plan to lower your expectations. As long the movie isn't two hours of punching grandmothers and kicking puppies, you're likely to leave the theater saying, "That was better than I expected."
Guess what? It works like a charm.
The A-Team, against all odds, is one extremely entertaining film. It puts pedal to metal about 90 seconds in and never lets up. That's also savvy because it's also kind of a mess that would collapse under its own weight if it slowed down for more than two minutes.
Director Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces, Narc) isn't taking that chance. Action scenes come flying at you hard and heavy from start to finish. The results are mixed: Some sequences are choppy and confusing, others thrilling. But like a comedy that never stops pitching jokes, content if only half of them stick, The A-Team pitches action, action, action, with a side of action and a little action to wash it down.
The plot follows the general concept of the TV series with a few tweaks. A (very) lengthy credits sequence set in Mexico shows us how the team of former Army Rangers comes together: Leader John "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson), his right-hand man Templeton "Face" Peck (Bradley Cooper), powerful Bosco "B.A." Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson) and loony pilot James "Howling Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley).
We jump ahead several years, where the A-Team is now an Army covert operations crew with dozens of successful missions under their belts. But when they're set up for a fall by a variety of villainous forces, the boys have to break out of jail and fight to clear their names.
That's pretty much all you wanted to know about the plot, right? Because it gets pretty confusing from there and doesn't matter in the slightest anyway. It's only there to support – that's right – action.
Before I tell you why A-Team is worth your hard-earned cash, I should lay out its many faults.
Though Carnahan directed, it's not surprising to see director Tony Scott was one of the producers. Too many scenes evince Scott's "look" – the camera shoved in way too tight on the actors, so you can't tell what the hell's going on in fight scenes or big gun battles.
The special effects are wildly uneven too, especially in the climax. It looks like the usual Hollywood problem of the CGI being "just good enough" to make a locked-in release date. This time, it's nowhere near good enough.
But then, The A-Team is a nitpicker's dream, if you really want to go there. Jessica Biel's casting seems like an inside joke – "we're not taking this seriously, and neither should you, so let's cast a gorgeous but astonishingly wooden actor in this role."
Maybe you're wondering whether she's really that bad. Look at it this way: This is the first major film role for "Rampage" Jackson, an MMA fighter. He's not great, but he's not too bad – and that's high praise for a non-actor stepping into the iconic role. Yet he's a good bit more believable than Biel.
So with those issues, what makes The A-Team so entertaining? The rest of the cast, actually. If you can look past Biel (actually, look right at her, that's what she's there for), the film is jam-packed with colorful, charismatic performances.
Neeson seems a bit odd at first stepping into George Peppard's shoes as Hannibal, being considerably taller, leaner and tougher. But that's appropriate for the movie, which is basically the TV show on (lots and lots of) steroids. No attempt is made to explain his Irish accent, nor that of Copley, who is South African. It doesn't matter: Somehow in this film, it works.
But the film decides early on to focus on Cooper, hot off his success in The Hangover, and it's the right choice. You'd never have guessed the guy who played eighth fiddle on Alias would be front-and-center for a star-making performance, but it's true.
The A-Team shows off Cooper's buffed-up physique almost to the point of absurdity – he's shirtless on screen more than Mark Wahlberg in Date Night – but Cooper's charisma carries the day throughout.
A well-rounded supporting cast also delivers. Patrick Wilson and Brian Bloom, as potentially shady characters related to the A-Team's troubles, steal every scene they're in. (It probably doesn't hurt that Bloom, a veteran actor mostly relegated to TV work, gets co-writing credit.) Their wonderfully brash characters bring welcome levity to the pounding machine of gunfights and explosions that propels The A-Team.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't note the drinking game that by all rights should be born from this film: Drink whenever a guy with icy blue eyes is on screen. You'd pass out halfway through the film.
There's Cooper and Neeson alone, plus Bloom and Wilson, with a little Gerald McRaney – yes, Major Dad himself – thrown in for good measure.
If you're really into dudes with bright blue eyes, The A-Team is like porn. If you're into nonstop action and lots of male bonding, The A-Team is like porn. If you're into deep, fully-realized female characters – well, look elsewhere.
But if you had to ask me what I would want a big-screen take on a really silly TV show to be, The A-Team more than fits the bill. It's ridiculous, sure. But it's also a ridiculous amount of fun.