the a-team
Jun. 15th, 2010 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intertribalSpoilers, 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 08:44 pm (UTC)There's more to that, but no time (right now) in which to get into it.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 08:50 pm (UTC)