The A-Team

Director: Joe Carnahan
Starring: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley & Quinton Jackson

The big budget remake of the 80s TV series often looks the part, with some good action and a likeable cast but does lack the heart of the series on which it is based and goes too OTT with the set pieces by the film’s finale.

With many TV series from the 80s and 90s seeing big screen adaptations over the past decade, few seemed as suitable for a big budget remake than The A-Team, an 80s TV series known for its action. The A-Team series though owed much of its popularity to its cast making any remake’s success reliant upon its casting of those roles too. Spending more than a decade going through development with John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) signed on to direct with Ice Cube to play B.A. Baracus until recently, Joe Carnahan (Narc) stepped in to bring the series to the big screen at last with help from original series producer Stephen J. Cannell and some revised casting decisions. While the casting of the four lead characters turns out to be quite enjoyable for the most part, they and the film as a whole still lack the charm of the original series.

On a mission in Mexico to rescue partner Templeton ‘Face’ Peck (Cooper) and depose a renegade General, ranger John ‘Hannibal’ Smith (Neeson) enlists the aid of two fellow rangers, Roscoe ‘B.A.’ Baracus (Jackson) and the eccentric H.M. ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock (Copley), Hannibal completes his mission and takes his team on to 80 more successful missions over the next 8 years. Now in the final days of the U.S.’s military involvement in Iraq, Hannibal is contacted by a C.I.A. operative named Lynch (Patrick Wilson) to take on one more black ops mission to recover stolen treasury plates that could be used by criminals to print their own U.S. currency. Completing the mission successfully, Hannibal’s ‘A-Team’ find themselves framed for theft and murder when the only General who could verify their mission as authentic is killed and the plates stolen by a rival named Pike (Brian Bloom). Sentenced to 10 years in prison, the team are given a chance to escape and clear their name by Lynch whose own motives are unknown whilst the team are also pursued by Captain Sosa (Jessica Biel), a former flame of Face’s now tasked with the mission of apprehending the A-Team.

Facing competition from comic book adaptation The Losers and Stallone film The Expendables, both ‘soldiers of fortune’ films themselves, The A-Team has help from the familiarity of the characters and concepts of the TV series it is adapting to draw in audiences which also means the film has a lot to live up to, to both reintroduce The A-Team for new audiences whilst satisfying fans of the 80s TV series. Casting of the four, now cult classic, lead characters from that series is important to the film’s success but so is also capturing the spirit of the TV series and The A-Team film suffers mixed results on both. Part of the charm of the TV series was it seeing the team able to escape almost any calamity through the team’s resourcefulness, their ability to take whatever materials they have at hand to produce a plan to win and the tools to ensure it. Taking this idea and pushing it to levels unseen in the TV series thanks to the budget of an action movie, The A-Team film sees some fun action sequences throughout its first half including the opening Mexico scene which brings the team together and includes a memorable helicopter chase and a mid film sequence where the team “fly a tank”. Both sequences are fun, big and memorable in keeping with the tone of the TV series however the film’s climax falls apart with a plan begins too OTT to begin with but suffers from poor CGI and a mad dash to resolve the film’s plot that undermines some of the fun that came before.

With a cast as fondly remembered as that of the original TV series cast, the cast of the film are largely enjoyable even though they don’t quite live up to the performances of their predecessors. Liam Neeson is enjoyable as Hannibal Smith, bringing some of the same confidence and swagger to the role that George Peppard brought though not quite the same level of warmth or charm but is enjoyable nonetheless. Bradley Cooper certainly brings charm to his performance as Face and is likeable but his youth makes his charm and cockiness feel less justified than that of Dirk Benedict’s performance. Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson brings a similar level of physicality as Mr. T did to B.A. Baracus but his performance is the weakest of the cast with Jackson’s performance feeling too soft, less angry than would be expected for the role. The best performance of the new cast is Sharlto Copley’s, following on the success of his role in District 9, he brings an enjoyable level of manic energy to the role of Murdock that, while more frenzied than the performance of Dwight Schultz in the 80s, is still fun and Copley steals most scenes. Amongst the supporting cast, Biel and Bloom are merely satisfactory in the roles of A-Team hunter/Face love interest and villainous henchman respectively though Patrick Wilson is quite enjoyable as C.I.A. agent Lynch.

The A-Team movie could never live up to the memories and expectations of audiences who grew up with the original 1980s TV series but the cast are mostly fun, Copley as Murdock especially, and the first half of the film features some enjoyable action sequences. The second half however disappoints with a set piece that goes overboard, featuring some awful CGI. Decent overall but nothing compared to the TV series.

Rating: 3/5

Toy Story 3

Director: Lee Unkrich
Starring (voices of): Tom Hanks, Tim Allen & Joan Cusack

Over a decade after Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3 arrives and manages to maintain the level of quality we’ve come to expect from Pixar with an entertaining sequel that brings the characters’ stories to their natural conclusion.

Having risen to success in 1995 on the back of the first Toy Story film that not only marked Pixar as a major studio but also revolutionized animation and animated movies, the first Toy Story is still considered one of, if not thee, best Pixar films in a 15 year history that has resulted in the finest animated films produced. Toy Story 2 came in 1999 and not only maintained the quality of the first film but also expanded the cast of characters and range of jokes for children and adults alike. Following success after success including Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Wall-E and Up, Pixar return to the Toy Story characters almost a decade later with Toy Story 3. With the pressure of not only having to live up to the quality of the first two films but also Pixar’s other films and those of competing studios, Pixar needed Toy Story 3 to be a success both commercially but critically. Fortunately Toy Story 3 is a very enjoyable film that pays respect to the earlier films, their characters and their audience and, while not pushing the franchise to greater heights, is at least the equal of those earlier films in terms of quality.

After years as Andy’s toys, the day they all knew would come has arrived as Andy prepares to leave for college. Facing an uncertain future that could mean life stored in the attic, being sold or even thrown away, Andy’s toys led by cowboy Woody (Hanks), space ranger Buzz (Allen) and cowgirl Jessie (Cusack) amongst others decide what to do next. However, when Andy’s mother makes the mistake of throwing away all but Woody, the toys escape and donates themselves to Sunnyside daycare despite the assurances of Woody that they are still wanted by Andy. Life at Sunnyside, where children play with toys every day, seems ideal at first but the chief toy there, Lotso the bear (Ned Beatty) turns out to be not as warm and friendly as the toys think and the process the toys go through to get to the best play rooms means facing destruction at the hands of children to young to play with properly. As the toys plan their escape from Sunnyside, Woody also plots to rescue them but even if they succeed, what future will they have with Andy gone to college anyway?

Under a lot of pressure to not only live up to the expectations of audiences who have loved the first two Toy Story films but also to live up to the quality set by those films and every subsequent Pixar production, Toy Story 3 had to succeed. Fortunately it does. While the general framework of the story does cover similar ground as the first two films with its central characters questioning their worth and the plot going from misunderstanding, leading to a new location, new characters, a new life then escape, reunion and battle with a villain, Toy Story 3 nevertheless builds upon this familiar plot in a way that makes it feel natural. Having posed the question 11 years before in Toy Story 2 over what will happen when Andy, the toys owner, grows too old for them, Toy Story 3 feels like the natural progression of the character’s story and also justifies the time that has passed between movies for the audiences. For audiences that were there for the first two films on their release, they too have grown up and while they look back on those early films with fondness, there is the question as to whether they too are too old for these characters now. Fortunately the key to making the story engaging to adults is that the characters themselves feel like adults an in a sense like parents seeing their child grow up and leave home while they look forward to possible retirement. Toy Story 3, like its predecessors, has a lot of heart and while some comes heavy so as to be understood by younger audiences, it still feels genuine. Toy Story 3 however, still has much to offer kids with many new toy characters, action set pieces and gags including several alterations to Buzz’ programming that leads, amusingly, to his original persona returning and then that of a Spanish alter-ego and also a transformation for Mr. Potato Head that are particularly memorable. Not all of the new characters are as memorable as Jessie from Toy Story 2, but of the new characters, the introduction of Ken as a love interest for Barbie is a highlight.

Most of the original cast return including Hanks as Woody, Allen as Buzz, Cusack as Jessie as well as Ratzenberger, Wallace Shawn, Don Rickles and Estelle Harris as Hamm, Rex and Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head respectively. The cast all perform enjoyably with each still able to slip into these characters with ease even after 11 years. Of the new characters and voice talent, Michael Keaton stands out as the voice of Ken with the character’s assertion that he isn’t a girl’s toy leading to an amusing performance by Keaton who ably conveys the character’s attempts to act tough when he’s really soft. Ned Beatty gives an enjoyable performance as Lotso, but his character is somewhat too similar to Kelsey Grammer’s the Prospector in Toy Story 2 with Beatty’s performance not comparing quite as well. Timothy Dalton, Jeff Garlin and Bonnie Hunt are good in smaller roles and John Morris, the original voice for the young Andy in previous films, returns to voice the older Andy and gives a warm performance too.

Toy Story 3 doesn’t really break from the formula of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and doesn’t push CG animation forward as much either but it is certainly a worthy sequel to the those films progressing the story of the characters naturally whilst also offering enough humour and feeling to keep audiences happy.

Rating: 4/5

Inception

Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Marion Cotillard

Ambitious and breathtaking, Inception is a blockbuster film that rewards intellectually whilst delivering action set-pieces that amaze in their scope and execution better than blockbuster films driven by spectacle.

Having initially come to the attention of cinemagoers with independent films such as Following and Memento, Christopher Nolan has since developed a reputation of being a skilled director of big budget blockbusters after being brought on to direct Batman Begins and the even more successful sequel The Dark Knight. Infusing those films with as much that was intellectually stimulating as they were adrenaline stimulating, Nolan has now turned to bringing Inception to the big screen, a film he has been developing since the early days of his directing career that has many of the cerebral aspects of his early works in terms of themes, ideas and execution but also Nolan has managed to secure a larger budget with which to realize them and produce a film that also succeeds as a summer blockbuster. Inception is an engaging and challenging film that also thrills and excites with its spectacle.

Cobb (DiCaprio) is an expert in the field of extraction, a complicated process where he and a team can enter the dreams of an individual and steal secret information by creating an artificial dream environment that convinces the dreamer that it is reality. Cobb is unable to return home to America to be reunited with his children due to a crime which he has been accused of committing. Cobb is approached by a former mark called Saito (Ken Watanabe), who wants to hire Cobb and his team to perform Inception, a difficult and risky process where an idea is planted into someone’s mind rather than taken which, in return, will see Cobb’s charges back home dropped. Cobb himself is unable to create dream worlds anymore due to his wife Mal (Cotillard) appearing in them and sometimes endangering Cobb and his jobs so Cobb recruits a new ‘architect’ named Ariadne (Ellen Page) to create a scenario where Cobb and his team delve deeper than they have before, a dream within a dream within a dream, which is the only way to successfully complete the mission but soon encounter problems, some created by Cobb’s own secrets, that threaten the lives of his team and the success of the mission.

The ambition of Inception is impressive. Nolan has created a film that has many layers of meaning. Inception delves into dreams and human consciousness and explores themes such as whether an emotional catharsis experienced in a dream is as valid as one experienced through actual experience; it explores ideas of life and death and life after death through the mind’s construction of dreams that feel real and where time can stretch out in various depths of dreaming as a metaphor for an afterlife (even the term Limbo is used in an interesting way); the film also explores filmmaking in a manner as Cobb’s team involves an architect, a forger, a financier, a mark and Cobb’s right hand man amongst others which parallel the roles of set designer/cinematographer, actor, studio, audience and produce with Cob as director with those same roles also working within the film’s framework of being a heist film. The plot is based around the conventions of the heist film which, while allowing Nolan to explore many other themes, also allows Nolan to produce a film that involves action and tension and which he can develop set pieces that amaze but with the spectacle working simultaneously as block buster action and also as visualizations of the dream state and of Nolan’s themes seen most effectively when the heist/job reaches it’s later stages and see three simultaneous action sequences occurring on three separate levels of the dream world and over three separate time frames including a zero-gravity fight scene that is one of the most impressive action sequences put on film.

Inception features a strong ensemble cast. Leonardo DiCaprio is impressive in a role where his character is struggling with own history involving dream worlds and secrets involving his wife that threaten to consume him and disturb his own grip on what is real and what is fantasy. It plays nicely against his performance in Scorsese’s Shutter Island where DiCaprio playing a character suffering similar problems but here DiCaprio’s role and performance is filled with more emotion. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets less to work with in terms of character but impresses as an action star getting the film’s key action sequence. Ellen Page is warm and sympathetic as Ariadne who is enamored with the idea of creating dream worlds but is also Cobb’s key sympathizer and conscience. Tom Hardy is charming and funny in the ‘actor’ role while Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Tom Berenger and Dileep Rao are solid in other supporting roles. Marion Cotillard is suitably threatening despite her appearance and Cillian Murphy delivers an impressive performance as the mark who the team are trying to infuse with a new outlook and experiences an emotional catharsis as a result that is truly believable.

Overall, Inception is an impressive film combining the spectacle of a block buster action film, the thrills of a heist movie yet featuring many layers of meaning over filmmaking, dreams, perceptions of reality and life and death that mean Inception engages on an intellectual level better than most block buster films. Audiences are just as likely to debate the film’s ideas and meaning as they discuss its action sequences. Fantastic.

Rating: 5/5

Predators

Director: Nimrod Antal
Starring: Adrien Brody, Alice Braga & Topher Grace

Better than other sequels to the original Predator film, Predators is very enjoyable even though it owes a lot to nods to the original film and does not really stand out as being very original.

The original Predator film in 1987 was a big hit and fast became a cult classic film with a memorable monster that has since stuck in the memory of action and sci-fi fans. The film’s first sequel, Predator 2, in 1990 was less well received due, in part, to the absence of Arnold Schwarzenegger and disappointing execution of its promising concept of relocating the action from the jungles to the city. No other sequels presented themselves afterwards with the Predator character living on in the form of comic books until 2004 saw the first of two Alien vs. Predator films that put the Predator up against another cult monster. Both films were disappointing, lacking memorable characters or humour and sticking to slasher film formula so Predators, produced by director Robert Rodriguez, comes to cinemas with a lot to live up to and, whilst not feeling particularly original, turns out to be far more enjoyable than any other sequel and certainly feels very much like a sequel the original deserves.

Waking up in freefall, mercenary Royce (Brody) lands in an unknown jungle and soon finds himself not alone when he discovers several other humans who have also been mysteriously dropped into the same jungle including black ops sniper Isabelle (Braga), a Spetsnaz commando, a drug cartel enforcer, a Sierra Leone death squad soldier, a death row convict, a Yakuza assassin and Edwin (Grace), a doctor. The group soon find that the jungle they’re in is not even on Earth and the one thing most of them have in common is they’re all predators in one way or another. They realize they are in a game preserve and they are the prey for a band of alien hunters and are forced to fight for their survival.

Produced by Robert Rodriguez and directed by Nimrod Antal, Predators feels like a sequel that maintains the spirit of the original film. There are many references to the first film and similar themes throughout. From bringing back the original score, to the jungle setting, familiar Predator technology and hunting methods, lines of dialogue and weapons like a mini Gatling gun, Predators generates much fun for fans of the franchise in spotting references but the film also offers moments that were only teased in the first film such as one-on-one knife fight between Billy in the first film that occurred off-screen now realized as a sword fight on screen between a Predator and the Yakuza character of Hanzo. Such tributes and fanboy-ish moments (the film also features a Predator vs. Predator stand off) show a love for the original film and respect for it as the events of the first film are even referenced directly as a plot point that allows the cast of characters to learn from those events and apply it to their survival strategy. However, while much entertainment is derived from its references to previous films, they also stand as one of the film’s weaknesses as Predators often feels too much like a retread of the original film. Predators also features some poor moments of CGI such as a sequence involving Predator-dogs that not only feels unnecessary to the plot in that it delays the moment when the Predators themselves get more involved, the effects also stand out as being unlike anything seen in the first film when many other effects feel in keeping with those used in the 1980s i.e. costumes and physical effects/stunts.

The cast in Predators is generally decent overall. While Predator in 1987 was short on name actors or characterization, it did benefit from the star power of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role who was always convincing as a hero that could challenge a Predator. In Predators, that lead role goes to Adrien Brody as Royce. While Brody does deliver a dependable performance, one believable as an anti-hero, he is less convincing as a person capable of challenging a Predator even in spite of obvious efforts on Brody’s part to bulk up physically. Brody is still a decent lead but it’s Alice Braga who generates the most sympathy as a black ops sniper who at least has a code of honour that doesn’t strictly involve putting her own survival first. Amongst the rest of the cast there are few that really stand out. Walton Goggins is best served getting most of the memorable lines as a nervy, somewhat unstable death row convict and Laurence Fishburne is OTT in a cameo role. Topher Grace’s character and performance is the odd man out as the person who is out of place amongst the cast of killers but it leads to an interesting, if unsurprising and somewhat ridiculous twist later in the film but adds some additional comic relief when he is paired with Goggins.

Overall, Predators is certain to entertain fans of the original film through its frequent nods to the original and moments that fans have probably been longing to see on screen though this also means that there isn’t enough originality for the sequel to stand equal with the first film. Fun but not fantastic.

Rating: 3/5