Movie Review: The A-Team

What price nostalgia? I have seldom been as determined to enjoy a movie as I was this one. As a boy in the eighties, I grew up eagerly anticipating each new episode of the A-Team. I loved the crafty Hannibal, admired the suave Face, chuckled at the antics of Murdoch and envied the power of B.A. Even the generally poor reception by critics overseas wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits about the movie version. These critics complained of the non-stop and frankly unbelievable action scenes as well as poor character development. Well, for goodness sakes this is the A-Team we are talking about. It’s not meant to be a cultural experience akin to a night at the opera. In fact, the whole point of the A-Team TV series was that it was never meant to be taken too seriously. It was just a whole lot of fun!

If this was your experience of the A-Team, then the movie definitely won’t disappoint you, because it is a whole lot of fun. No, there is not much serious character development asides from B.A.’s flirtation with pacifism (you know that’s not going to last!), and yes, it is pretty much non-stop action, most of it completely unrealistic, but, boy is it fun to watch!

Although this movie version was shot almost a quarter of a century after the TV series ended, it really sets itself up as a prequel. In other words, we find out how the A-Team, a crack squad of elite Army Rangers becomes “convicted for a crime they did not commit”. In an effort to keep pace with the last 25 years, the landscape of their war experience is changed from Vietnam to Iraq, but other than that all the original themes and characters were kept in place. Hannibal (Liam Neeson) is still leading the team; Face (Bradley Cooper) is the hunky con-man; B.A. (ex UFC light-heavyweight champ Quinton Jackson) is the muscle; and Murdock (our own Sharlto Copley) is the kooky pilot. Details which always made the TV series such fun such as the big, bad B.A.’s fear of flying are kept intact, and we even find out how this fear originated.

All the actors put in strong performances and obviously have a whole lot of fun making this movie. Without exception they are all better actors than the originals, although that probably isn’t saying much. I was pleasantly surprised with the two unknowns in Quinton Jackson and Sharlto Copley. I expected Jackson to be awful, much like many sports stars turned actors are, but he wasn’t bad at all. Sharlto Copley you will remember as Wikus vd Merwe from District 9, and he was probably the movies highlight. He does a number of accents throughout, and the brief scene where he ‘does’ a South African accent is a classic.

As I have mentioned, the action is a roller-coaster ride of non-stop adrenaline rushes and at the same time is utterly, utterly unbelievable. Still, they do kill people in this A-Team which wasn’t allowed in the 80’s prime-time TV show were bullets would erupt out of flame-spewing guns and not a soul would be harmed. If you go in expecting a decent plot, you will be sorely disappointed. This is nothing more than formulaic action movie stuff, built around concepts like injustice and revenge. I won’t even bother explaining the plot since you probably have seen something similar a million times before. It’s not like anyone going to see the A-Team is anticipating an original storyline anyway.

There is no doubt about it but The A-Team is pure candyfloss. But what enjoyable candyfloss it is! So what price nostalgia? Well, at least half a star. The A-Team really is worth no more than a good, solid three stars but just because it is The A-Team, I award it three and a half! (Yes, I can do that).

Be warned that there is violence and very strong language throughout.

Movie Review: Peepli Live

Peepli Live is a fantastic first-time effort by Indian filmmaker Anusha Rizvi who takes a serious social problem and subjects it to satirical scrutiny. In this way, Rizvi popularises a topic to much greater effect than might have been achieved through a normal documentary.

Peepli Live is fascinating, funny and yet also very sobering. India has an incredibly interesting culture that much like South Africa is caught between two vastly different worlds – one of wealth and comfort and the other of life-threatening poverty. As India moves rapidly to an industrialised economy, farmers are being sidelined to quite devastating effects. Whole families are losing their land, and many farmers are either abandoning their work, or worse, committing suicide in sheer desperation.

Farmer suicide is such a common problem in India that it has hit the headlines numerous times before. In this movie Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) is callously advised by an uncaring local politician to commit suicide as a way of saving his land and family. His laughably craven and conniving brother Budhia (Raghubir Yadav) takes advantage of his brother’s obvious simplicity and eggs him on (he would benefit to the tune of 100,000 Rupees from a government grant). A local reporter desperate to hit the big-time Rakesh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) overhears the brothers conversing and turns it into a news story. The story is picked up by a famous and glamorous TV personality (Malaika Shenoy) who rushes to the scene closely followed by other newshounds snapping at her heels. The result is that the whole affair is hugely sensationalised and soon the entire country is caught up in the saga of the simple farmer who vows to kill himself.

Lending even more hype to the story is that it is election time, and various politicians find their campaigns thrown into jeopardy by Nathi’s vow. Both the TV stations who sensationalise stories at the expense of the real people caught up in the tragedy of it all, and the politicians who seemingly care for little more than their own re-election, are lampooned with zest and energy. The best satires make political and social commentary behind a veil of laughter that is both ‘ha ha’ funny and also ‘ouch that’s true’ funny, and in this regard Peepli Live excels. I found some of the sniping battles between the mother-in-law and Nathi’s put-upon wife a little clichéd, but particularly enjoyed various scenes of the reporters encamped in Nathi’s village of Peepli. Some of them became so desperate to keep the story rolling that they even resorted to discussing the state of his faeces (which is um, funnier than it sounds here).

The local reporter, Rakesh, is the film’s moral barometer and we find ourselves anchored to his own slow disillusionment in the face of the big-time reporter’s predatory tactics, and the politician’s total lack of compassion. While I don’t think Peepli Live is a serious contender for Best Foreign Film, at the same time it is an absorbing comic gem. The satire works perfectly, and manages to focus your attention upon the terribly desperate plight of the real men, women and children caught up in endless cycles of destructive and dehumanising poverty. This movie will not only make you laugh, but also get you seriously thinking about life which is obviously the point.

Four stars out of five for Peepli Live. Be aware that it is a foreign language film and does have some strong language throughout.

Movie Review: Mao's Last Dancer

Mao’s Last Dancer is a beautiful tale filled with sumptuous costumes and sublime dancing. This is a story of freedom and learning to fly, and although it has a few inevitable clichés, the movie as a whole manages to gracefully pirouette away from being overly corny.

Mao’s Last Dancer is based on a true story, and centres on Li Cunxin who is the sixth son of a peasant family living in a poverty-stricken Chinese village. It is 1972, in the midst of the infamous Cultural Revolution and Li (played as a child by Huang Wen Bin) is plucked from his home and sent to Madame Mao’s Beijing Dance Academy. Li is pushed to the limits in his dance training while being simultaneously educated with Maoist Communist doctrine. However, much like Baryshnikov, Li Cunxin was too talented to be hidden behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ for long, and is spotted by Houston Ballet director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood).

The adult Li (played by Birmingham Royal Ballet principal Chi Chao) is seconded to America where he learns that the West is not as awful as he had been taught. Most importantly, Li is set free to dance traditional ballet and is no longer forced to participate in propagandist military-style Chinese ballet. The real struggle in this movie is not so much Li seeking freedom from a totalitarian state, but of the struggle he faces for his own artistic soul. Li also falls in love with an American dancer named Liz (Amanda Shull), and begins plotting a way to stay in America with the assistance of some friends and immigration lawyer Charles Foster (Kyle MacLachlan). He is agonisingly aware that his decisions may negatively impact on the fate of his family back home, and has to learn to live with the fact that he may never see them again.

Although nearing the end of his directing shelf-life, Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) does an excellent job with this movie. He was allowed unprecedented access to Chinese locations and these scenes in particular are exquisitely shot. More than that, he manages to steer away from typical anti-Communist and America-is-great stereotypes, and in this Beresford manages to draw strong performances from all his key role players. Key to this is that that even the Communist leaders who attempted to prevent Li’s bid for freedom were portrayed as being both human and somewhat fragile. By concentrating on the human stories behind the story, rather than his own version of political propaganda, Beresford has produced a movie that is hauntingly beautiful from beginning to end. The ballet scenes are worth the entry price alone as we are shown dancing that quite literally takes your breath away with its heady mix of balanced strength and mesmerising grace. Even if ballet is not exactly your cup of tea, you will struggle not to be affected by the sheer artistry of some of the scenes.

In summary, this is a story about how beautiful humanity can be when we give of the best of ourselves. It reminds us of what we can achieve and that at the end of the day, the human beings and relationships behind all the dancing, politics and ideologies are most important.

Mao’s Last Dancer is full value for its four stars out of five.

Movie Review: Inception

Say one thing about Leonardo DiCaprio; say he knows how to choose himself a movie role! There are a lot of good looking individuals around who can act a little, but the Titanic star sets himself above the rest by consistently choosing great movies to strut his stuff in. Of course, it can’t hurt to be Christopher Nolan’s first choice either, since Nolan is probably the hottest movie maker in Hollywood today, with recent hits like Memento and The Dark Knight. Nolan both wrote and directed Inception, and he and DiCaprio are surely onto another massive hit with this sci-fi thriller.

Inception is not a perfect film, but it gets pretty close in my opinion. Its two and a half hours literally fly because of the fantastic mix of fast-paced action, stunning visuals, mind-blowing plot and strong acting. Inception plays around with one central paradox: What is reality and what is dreaming? Which of the two is most real? Keep in mind that with this theme, Inception WANTS to disorientate you as part of an overall plot device and so it has layers and layers of differing perspectives, shifting scenes, and surprising character development. Yes, you will have to concentrate to keep up but that is a major part of the fun!

DiCaprio plays Cobb, an espionage agent who specialises in stealing ideas from other people’s heads. He enters their dream states to source their greatest secrets. Cobb’s own subconscious is plagued by the horrific death of his wife, and the fact that he has been blamed for her murder. As a result he cannot enter the States and is prevented from seeing his children. His desperation to be there for his kids means he takes on a job no one believes can be done involving the task of not stealing an idea, but instead of planting one inside the mind of a billionaire on behalf of a rival corporation.

Cobb’s reward will see all charges dropped and so in the best tradition of great heist movies, he sets about setting up a crack team with differing talents. Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is his long-time partner; Eames (Tom Hardy) is a con-artist and master at deception; Yusuf (Dileep Rao) is a master chemist. And there is a new recruit, Ariadne (Ellen Page), a brilliant young architect who is brought in to build the actual dream world – something that Cobb can no longer do since his subconscious is so fraught with guilt and pain over his broken family.

Cobb's team are hired to enter the dream world of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), a billionaire with severe father issues. The problem is that Fischer’s mind has been trained to deal with dream infiltration agents, so they have to deal with all sorts of gun-toting ‘mindguards’ – mental projections that exist to protect him at this level. I won’t give away too much more of the plot suffice to say that there are plenty of layers and endless depths to plumb. Despite the inevitable confusion, you are kept in the story by its visual and emotional rollercoaster style. There may be plot holes in Inception, but I didn’t notice any, and at the end of the day what most captivated me was that the emotional connection matched the intellectual challenge. I found myself really caring about Cobb and his team, and rooting for him to get back to his children despite the illegal means he was using to get there.

Inception is well worth seeing and fully earns its four and a half stars out of five. Be aware that there is some strong language and violence throughout.