*** out of *****
I've never read the comic book this is based on, but it's apparently got its fans, so I assume it's gotta be better than this thing. It opens they way all action-comedies should open…with the murder of 25 innocent children. At this rate, we'll be seeing 9/11 movies starring The Rock and some cutsy kid.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan (the Robert Downey, Jr.-looking guy from Watchmen) is the leader of an A-Team-like band of military specialists. They, much like the A-Team, are great soldiers with all sorts of wisecracks, and run afoul of a bad guy G-Man (Jason Patric) who attempts to kill them and kills the aforementioned 25 children instead. Our team of lovable losers must nut up and get back to America with the help of a truly awful Zoe Saldana and even the score with Patric. Too bad we've seen it all before, and much better.
It really does feel like a long episode of The A-Team, where everything goes 1) plot point 2) one-liners 3) action 4) one-liners 5) repeat. But the action is fairly typical and the plot is so unmemorable that it's hard to remember why anyone is actually doing any of these things. Most of the "clever one-liners" aren't near as clever as the screenwriters think they are, although a few work here and there. The best one is probably "I'm the black MacGuyver! Blaguyver!" But I only say that because it's the only one I bothered to remember, and that might be more because it was in all the previews.
To their credit, Morgan and the underrated Chris Evans do the best they can with the weak material, and even manage to make it work here and there. Idris Elba is utterly wasted in his role. I barely remember the other guys on the team. The best performance though belongs to Patric, who seems to be channeling Nicolas Cage at his Bad Lieutenanty best. He twitches and preens and generally looks like he knows it's a shitty movie so he's going to be as ridiculous as possible to teach someone a lesson. I'm not sure who learned anything, but I had a blast watching him.
I want to make a special point to discuss Zoe Saldana, who's the latest "it girl." She sucks pretty fucking hard. Watching her in this movie was like being the guy at the end of Audition getting needles shoved into your eyelids. She's got that Angelina Jolie problem of being way too damn skinny to be tough or fearsome in any way, and her attempts at being a badass chick just made me wonder how any of her costars could take her seriously.
I suppose the good and bad kinda cancel each other out, and just make the movie sort of forgettable instead of painful. Maybe something for nondiscriminating action fans. Everyone else can just watch some old A-Team episodes.
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