the a-team

[intertribal]

Spoilers, I guess.  

For my money, the best part of this movie is a 5-minute sequence in a car featuring no member of the A-Team.  There are four CIA personnel in this car, and squeezed in the backseat is their "hostage," a military contractor dude.  The CIA has earlier been described as "wearing body armor in headquarters... which should tell you all you need to know" while the military contractor dudes, "Black Forest" (get it, get it?) have been described as "assassins in polo shirts," which I must admit is a nice touch.  So anyway, the CIA thinks that it has the drop on Black Forest guy, because after all Black Forest guy is in handcuffs, and one CIA guy makes a big show of getting a gun ready to shoot Black Forest guy with - except he can't unlock the safety, he can't screw the silencer on right, he can't even aim it properly.  And Black Forest guy is like, "Please.  Don't let him shoot me."  And the entire scene is basically this brief, wonderful little comedy of errors featuring two of the big behind-the-scenes hitters of US foreign relations - one incompetent and arrogant, one ruthless and heartless.  And oh yeah, they're the bad guys.  

For a blockbuster, this thing is hugely about the American government at war with itself - well, maybe a better word would be the American government squabbling with itself - as opposed to AMERICA fighting Obscenely Wealthy Foreign Fiends (OWFF, for short.  It's the sound they make when you punch 'em in the guts!!)  And I thought that was really great.  Black Forest isn't redeemed with a "few bad apples ruin the whole artillery" speech.  A different CIA dude tries this speech, but it's quickly undermined.  At the end, the A-Team complains that they tried to play by the system's rules, "but the system burned us again."  Similar complaints have been lodged by other super-squads in other summer movies, but it means a little more here because of how believably flawed the system really appears.  The bad guys aren't despicable, rodent-like politicos trying to cut deals with an OWFF - they're just government people trying to get rich quick, themselves sick of playing and getting burned by the system's rules.

That all is the good part.  The bad part is how lame and backward the movie's racial politics are.  There is only one minority with a speaking role (there's one Asian guy that stands around in his job working for Love Interest), and that is B.A.  And he is clearly the Comic Relief of the A-Team, except not even in that Chris Tucker black-guy-that-cracks-lots-of-jokes way.  Nope.  B.A.'s repertoire is basically (a) loud, physical anger accompanied by loud, physical threats, (b) crippling fear of flying (he's the only one that's shown as having fear of any sort) that leads to him being knocked out several times so the A-Team can take flight, and occasionally screaming in utter distress during flights (while everyone else seems to be having a good time), and (c) being bribed into calmness by being offered some kind of food in babytalk.  But there's one part where he's even trapped in essentially a cage and the rest of the A-Team is laughing at him (they claim to be scared of his anger, but they're laughing).  When he tries to guess the which-of-the-three-cups-is-holding-the-ball magic trick, he's wrong (the others are right).  Even his spiritual/ethical awakening is played for laughs and implied to be shallow.  B.A. does get the coolest kill, but I don't think that fixes, you know, everything else.  Now I don't know the original A-Team - maybe this is just how the character is - but it was embarrassing to watch.  Oh wait, there's one other minority.  A Mexican general who literally commandeers the Mexican military to chase after the A-Team because one of the A-Team dudes sleeps with (and then runs off with) his wife.  Ah, those hot-headed Mexican generals.  Always getting blown up by American missiles.  

4s Marry 4s, 7s Marry 7s: I guess, although because Romance Dude actually isn't Main Protagonist (at least from my perspective), the whole romance subplot doesn't factor in too much.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Sadly, my memories of B.A. in the original are that he's like that though I think the movie sort of distilled it, and all the other characters' personalities (using the term kind of loosely) into something slightly more astringent than their previous incarnations. But then, sometimes a cigar is really all that scenery Liam ate over the course of the movie.

4s Marry 4s, 7s Marry 7s

Enneagram?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Funny story, didn't even realize it was ol' Liam until he wore his "disguise." I do wonder why they'd go for the more astringent, though.

Nope, it's from a House episode, where House realizes that he's hallucinating because the woman married to his ugly patient is beautiful. And he says, "4s marry 4s, 7s marry 7s." I keep track of it in popcorny movies. In my interpretation, it basically means "do I think the two romantic leads are as awesome as each other?" What I find these days is that a lot of Sub-Average Joes are getting matched up with Extraordinary Janes. So movies like Knocked Up and Kick-Ass don't pass the test, but say, Robin Hood and Iron Man (IMO) do. Arguably Twilight fails the test because Bella is portrayed as such a lightweight in comparison to astonishingly astonishing Edward.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. That makes a good deal of sense. And YES, enough with the mismatched couples for the love of God.

There's more to that, but no time (right now) in which to get into it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Haha, I hope you get back to me eventually! I'd love to know what you have to say.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I just figure you're speaking a strange movie/book review dialect that is unintelligible to me.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

That may be an assumption that is better for both our sanities. It's not very important.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

lol.

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

In the original A-Team, BA is played off as Scary Black Dude whose achilles heel is his phobia of heights and flying. Actually, the film sorta deepened the characters a bit more. I too was a little disappointed in BA's fake-out spiritual enlightening, which I felt could really have been done with some more equilibrium.

All in all, though, I enjoyed the movie. The scene you mentioned was just about the best, though. Also, good point about the political undertones that make the story stand out from any number of other "Disgruntled Super Army Team" movies (some of which I also enjoyed). I think the instigator of the whole plot said it best (paraphrasing here): "I just cheated him before he had a chance to cheat me". Which is pretty much how shit is done.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I see. Yeah, I didn't really know if this was going uphill or downhill. I was pretty sure that BA was going to kill people but the whole "let's pretend Gandhi was down with violence" thing... was a little weird.

I enjoyed the movie too - and I also liked The Losers well enough, but that really had nothing on this one context-wise.

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I was sort of ????? during that sequence.

I think the Losers was right to get in theaters before The A-Team. While both were skirting that action-comedy edge, I think the A-Team did theirs a bit smarter (although they did have a bigger budget). The Losers seemed to have better chemistry with their ensemble, but A-Team had more interesting characters individually. Or, maybe, I was just able to rely upon my nostalgic memory of the characters and was more interested in how they updated them individually.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I agree that The Losers' ensemble had better chemistry (disappointed as I was that Idris Elba turned heel...). I don't have any nostalgic memory of anything and I preferred A-Team for a lot of reasons. I do think that a big one is that it was just made better, and knew what it was trying to do. The Losers was a little too style over substance - I don't even remember who the villain was supposed to be, except that he wore a white suit.

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

4s Marry 4s, 7s Marry 7s: I guess, although because Romance Dude actually isn't Main Protagonist (at least from my perspective), the whole romance subplot doesn't factor in too much.

I have less to say about this on 4s vs 7s, but rather that the film had a basically irrelevant romance subplot. This reminded me of the old tale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_team#Marla_Heasley.27s_experiences_on-set) that George Peppard (who played the original Hannibal) told the female supporting lead on-the-set that the A-Team production didn't need her, since the story was about men. Which, to be an apologetic for a moment, makes sense in the realm of masculine escapist fantasy and the mythic crusader(s) tale (which Peppard would have been pretty damned familiar with in literature spanning his lifetime). The A-Team is about the guys and doesn't offer a lot to women except as accessories. For better or worse, it's a dolled up Boys Tale (or even as some kind of American seinen). Eh. Whatever.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

No argument from me there. I was happy that they let it be an actual masculine escapist fantasy and didn't feel the need to Remind Us That We Are All Heterosexual by, say, throwing Megan Fox in there.