Apologies for the delay on the review, but man “do I love it when a plan comes together.” The A-Team hit theaters last weekend, to the disappointing second place performance at the box office. Despite the fact the Karate Kid gave a round house kick to the movie, the A-Team is still one hell of a ride. Written and Directed by Joe Carnahan, the A-Team is a feature film adaption of the successful 80′s television also with the same name.

Starring Bradley Cooper, Liam Neeson, Sharlto Copley (District 9), and Quintin “Rampage” Jackson, the A-Team gets an A for excitement, action, and pure exhilarating fun. For those not familiar with the storyline, the A-Team is a group of 4 mercenaries who are the elite of the elite in the military and successfully complete the most asinine and insane of missions in the craziest possible ways: Mission Impossible meets McGiver.  Basically, don’t piss these guys off.

Cooper plays the ladies man “Face,” who definitely has plenty of command on screen as a leading comedic action star. I was pleasantly surprised here. I wasn’t sure how is familiar role in the sarcastic, but lovable family man would translate to an action movie. Cooper nailed it and you can gaurantee we will see him in more roles like this.  On a side note, he got absolutely jacked for this movie. In fact, word on the street was that he hadn’t seen the movie until the premiere (or something pretty close to that) and didn’t realize how jacked he was until he saw himself on screen.  Now he has a man crush on himself.

Hannibal, played by Neeson, is the group’s leader and garners enough street-cred on screen that you find yourself believing every word he says. His plans essentially work to perfection. Jackson is a good Mr. T, though he definitely tried very hard to virtually duplicate the Baracus character that Mr T. so famously portrayed on the TV show.  I was not a huge fan of the show, so Jackson trying too hard did not upset me as much as it would a true fan. For a guy with not much acting experience, I think he did fine.  However, the man who stole the show was Copley.

Sharlto Copley, the main character from District 9, was absolutely brilliant. His character, Murdock, is the team’s crazy pilot and by crazy I truly mean clinically insane.  His performance made light of so many intense action scenes that it really made the movie more family action fun then violent. I definitely think that’s what the studio was gunning for especially because they fought hard for that PG-13 rating. Copley’s comedic performance was so contagious that Cooper and Neeson had no trouble playing off his jokes. It added to the great onscreen chemistry between the 4 and made this movie extremely entertaining to watch.

The A-Team is a great comedic, military action movie with plot twists and thing for the crazy. Huge explosions, lots of guns, the guys listed above, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson and a bag of popcorn, make the A-Team a perfect Summer movie.

We give it a SEE IT rating.

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