"Don't give me no tiny picture, sucka!"
Starring Bradley Cooper of The Hangover as Templeton “Faceman” Peck, former UFC champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as B.A. Baracus, Sharlto Cooper of District 9 as Murdoch and Liam Neeson as Col. Hannibal Smith.
Yes, that is the venerable GMC full-sized van in the background.
Pros: John Singleton is off the project, replaced by Joe Carnahan of Smoking Aces and Narc. I like the casting and I’ll watch anything with Liam Neeson. Plenty of Rampage throwing people with the ground-level camera, not to mention vehicles repeatedly flipping in rather loud and ostentatious repetition. Odds are around three million rounds thrown in the air with no one struck. Not to mention the required Lance LeGault and Charles Napier cameos.
Cons: How about this …
The fab four will be joined by Jessica Biel, who plays an army general in hot pursuit.
Lets hope that was a bit of confusion on the part of the story’s author. The foursome always traveled with a female reporter in tow, hopefully that’s Biel.
Paging Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz to Big Hollywood please, paging Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz …
H/T: Kyle Smith.
UPDATE: Frequent commenter Lars Walker chimes in with a line I wish I had written.
At least they didn’t cast a chick in Dirk Benedict’s role in this one.
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Just an aside, “The A-Team” was the first television show I could recall as being “my favorite TV show” with actual people and where I could recall the actual story over a length of time. Up to that point my memory is nothing but Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny. My mom said I loved “B.J. and the Bear” (for obvious reasons) and “Starsky and Hutch,” though I was too young to remember watching much of them. I googled “B.J. and the Bear” a couple years ago, saw an image of “Stacks” and wondered how I could have ever stopped.
I always liked TJ Hooker but nothing in my mind tops Magnum PI.
The Biel thing has to be a typo.
I hope they can bring themselves to actually kill a couple people with their automatic weapons fire in the movie version. That always stuck in my craw. And I always wondered what would have happened if they didn’t get locked up in a shed full of power tools, just once.
In today’s Hollywood, the idea of Jessica Biel as an army general isn’t unthinkable. She’s what? 30 years old? That’s ancient by Hollywood standards, and of course the army’s an equal-opportunity employer in movieland.
My advice, though–don’t give her any lines. Just put her in a tight tee-shirt.
OMG! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO…..Jessica Biel? Why why why…..for that matter WHY?
The cast seems OK. Liam Neeson as Hannibal is interesting but wtf? I can’t deal with Bradley Cooper. What a metrosexual GIT!
Need to know who the “enemy” will be before I’ll consider seeing it. If it’s S African neo-nazis, rogue US millitary men, or super-greedy capitalists – game over.
Stephanie that was the best description of Bradley Cooper ever. Personally, and I know this will spark disagreement, but I would have made Dwayne Johnson “Face”. He would be perfect.
Bradley Cooper metrosexual??? Obviously you never saw The Hangover or Wedding Crashers. The Rock is cmpletely wrong for Face. Face is supposed to be a pretty boy but tough. I guess Dwayne is handsome, but he’s not a pretty boy. Cooper’s perfect.
Yeah, why the Cooper anti-love? Big fan since his Alias days, and Hangover and Wedding Crashers only upped his ante in my book. Don’t know much about the guys stepping into the B.A. and Murdoch roles, but Neeson and Cooper as perfect casting can be without resurrecting Peppard and knocking 20 years off Benedict, coincidentally one of the stars of one of my first favorite shows Battlestar Galactica. Always loved the Cylon walk-by in the A-Team opening credits and Dirk’s double-take.
Biel? Meh. She’ll never top her undies scene in the Sandler/James fake gay marriage movie (Chuck & Larry?), so whatever. Window dressing amongst the explosions and flipping cars. Speaking of which…
Joe Carnahan fan, too. Narc very underappreciated (though I am a sucker for Ray Liotta movies not co-starring Whoopi) and Smokin’ Aces just the right kind of over-the-top and excessive violence A-Team needs.
I don’t know who Bradley Cooper is, but I agree with your perspective, Floyd. Face is a pretty boy, and a conman. A clever, fast-talker. Dirk Benedict was awesome as the original and he sounds like a heckuva nice guy. Left the bright lights of Hollywood for the quality of life of Montana to raise his sons.
Yeah. ANd I own the Wedding Crashes. I can’t stand him. There is nothing there. Period. I haven’t seen the Hangover and I most likely will but guys like Cooper are what is wrong with Hollywood. Barf.
Funny how different perspectives are. I see Cooper as an anti-Clooney, confident without being cocky, and one of th few things that’s right with Hollywood. Now if he’d only steer clear of the likes of Renee Zellweger.
“What the hell’s a Renee Zellweger?!?!”
LEONARD WASHINGTON
What role did he play in “The Wedding Crashers?”
He was the fiancee of the girl Owen Wilson was going after.
Ahh, the guy who took the touch football game a little too seriously. Doesn’t he favor Steve Carrol a bit?
Maybe the person Carrell’s Michael on The Office thinks he is.
I second Floyd. Cooper may play the “pretty boy” in some films but he’s no metrosexual. His turn in The Hangover was starmaking.
If done right… any pursuit by Jessica Biel is hot pursuit.
3-2 odds against smoke coming out of the end of Neeson’s cigar.
5-2 odds in favor of climate change remark about the van.
2-1 odds in favor of remarks on how f***ed up Iraq War was (they’re veterans right?)
Major mixed emotions here regarding the A-Team movie. Hannibal was my favorite original cast member and I can accept Neeson as Hannibal. He doesn’t have that authenticity Peppard brought as a Marine BUT he’ll do.
My main thought is: why? Just to churn out another franchise and sell products? Because Hollywood is bereft of ideas and morally bankrupt? I like the small-screen feel of the show. I like Stephen J. Cannell pulling the page out of his typewriter at the end. I like seeing the villains played by the familiar faces straight of central casting. I liked the cheesy guest stars like Hulk Hogan and Issac Hayes.
The A-Team isn’t sacred and the premise is still good. It has a lot of possibilities and could be a great movie. I just hope that the Iraq War angle doesn’t turn into a chance to advance someone’s agenda. I’ll take a wait and see attitude.
The A-Team actually is a bit sacred to me (was a Porvaznik family staple, even my eyeball-rolling mother, who accepted/accepts her role as the sole woman amongst four boys pretty admirably), so I’m not as cavalier and gung-ho as my previous post might indicate. Also waiting and seeing, but nowhere near as worried as when George Clooney was originally slated to play Hannibal.
Well…yeah, it IS a bit sacred but I was trying to keep it all in perspective…through clenched teeth. After all, it’s just entertainment and it means nothing to the youngsters here, like Blackhawk. If Mr. T and Dirk Benedict get some work or out of it then it won’t be for naught.
But I probably won’t see it!
Also, if they don’t write in cameos for the original cast it will be a huge missed opportunity. All those fellas are great, and it would be fun to play spot the original while watching the film, kind-of like looking for a Hitchcock cameo.
Don’t know or care about his personal politics, but considering Neeson starred in Taken, one of the better conservatively themed movies in recent years, not to mention Carnahan’s of the 80s generation, cameos from the original cast seems a little more plausible. Even Todd Philips was smart enough to throw Soul and Glaser cameos in Starsky and Hutch.
I’m just being too logical, though, aren’t I?
Meh. Never watched The A-Team, it started the year I was born and ended when I was 4.
That is no excuse, blackhawk. O.K., you were 4, but you were an American male, weren’t you?
There was one guy on my dorm floor who had a TV. His parents gave him one of those old, RCA, piece of furniture, tube driven things that took up half his dorm room floor. Every Tuesday(?) evening at 7:00(?) a bunch of us would pile into his room to watch the “A Team.” There was no excuse for missing. Not even a co-ed could come between us and the “A Team.” I once left a girlfriend alone on a jogging trail, several miles from civilization because her pace was going to make me miss the opening credits.
I watched the segment on “The A-Team” on VH1′s “I Love the 80′s.” Does that count?
No.
At least they didn’t cast a chick in Dirk Benedict’s role in this one.
I think you found one of the movie’s best taglines right there, Lars. Awesome!
Here is my biggest fear for the movie. I’m mostly afraid they’re going to turn it into some liberal douche bag thing where they have a hybrid van, are fighting evil corporations, and are complaining about fighting for “big oil” in Iraq. Unfortunately I could see all of those things happening.
Floyd good points on Face. After I thought about it more the other problem with having Dwayne Johnson playing Face would be he is just too damn big.
Neeson I think is a good call for Hannibal but part of me wishes they’d gotten an 80s action icon to play the role like Tom Selleck or something.
They mess with the van, we can always pop in Old School and cue the rounding up of the pledges, complete with Metallica on the soundtrack.
My brother is a decade younger than me. We rented Old School (he was in high school at the time the movie was released) and got to that scene. I sucked in the V-8, tire-peeling, Master of Puppets goodness of it all, looked at him and said, “My generation would have ate yours alive.”
I’m with blackhawk on this, never really watched the original show (he and I are the same age), except for a few episodes I caught in reruns. I can see the appeal, I suppose, but the whole “never actually hitting anyone, ever” took a lot of the excitement away. I could have more fun playing with GI Joes or something.
My disinterest aside, the casting is pretty interesting. I’ll see anything with Liam Neeson – one of the few actors out there with any sort of natural gravitas – and I’d say the Bradley Cooper casting is pretty spot-on, based on the descriptions above of “Face.” Cooper almost always comes across as something of a cocky a**hole, but he’s that cocky a**hole you want on your side. And yeah, if Carnahan brings the same feel to this that he brought to Smokin’ Aces, it could work. Balls-to-the-wall, over-the-top action sounds about right.
I loved the A-Team! I hope it does service to the original, and they must incorporate the original score. This might actually convince my husband and I to get a sitter and go see it in an actual theater. Neeson and Cooper are perfect casting choices. I just hope Hollywood doesn’t crap political correctness all over it and ruin it.
Let’s not forget, the original was a little anti-military. They were unjustly prosecuted by a U.S. military tribunal during the Viet Nam war, and that’s why they were underground.
That is why I’m not looking forward to this. You mention waiting for the sucker punch when watching Iron Man, this one has got sucker punch written all over it.
I pity the fool who thinks this is going to be a good movie.
Re: Update. Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Make sure to tip the waitress.
I’m with Liz, I need to know who the enemy is. I’m thinking this one may be a Netflix-er. That way I can mute the sound when Jessica Biel is on-screen.
But mmmmm…. Liam Neeson AND Bradley Cooper in the same film? That, plus sending the kids to Grandma’s, plus a chocolate cupcake and I’m on a short vacation from life. Hell, the volume could be muted through the whole thing. I’d still be delerious. (perhaps more so, depending on the final product — muting the sound made Twilight a *much* better movie)
When I was in High School I would watch Bears games with the sound muted and rock music playing in the background. It was a much better broadcast.
mmmmm Bradley Cooper
+JMJ+
I remember the A-Team, but I don’t recall any of the episodes. It’s one of those shows my mother watched when she was a teenager.
I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s Sharlito Copley I’m most excited about watching. After District 9, I’ll watch anything this guy is in. ANYTHING.