Review: The Dark Knight Rises (dir. Christopher Nolan)

Story: Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) lives in recluse. Mentally and physically broken by his years as Batman he sees Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) clean up the streets of Gotham. However, the arrivals of the gymnastic burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and of the cruel mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy) force Batman out of retirement. The question is if he is able to rise up again and confront his present foes as well as the demons of his past.

If The Dark Knight Rises is quite a disappointment, then it is so because of the enormous expectations of fans, and the high bar set by its predecessors, Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). In fact, to call ‘TDKR’ a bad film is unjustified. It is a good summer blockbuster; by far the best of this summer. It grabs such fodder as The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-man in their necks and scoulingly sends them back to kindergarten. And yet it disappoints.

The biggest let down for me was that director Christopher Nolan does not chart new territories and themes in TDKR. Rather, he returns to the issues already covered in quite some extent in Batman Begins. And although Bruce Wayne / Batman does grow as a character, I miss the expansion to Batman’s universe and psychology that made The Dark Knight so very special. From a storytelling point of view it makes sense to make the circle complete, and Nolan does not hesitate to emphasize this, using quite a big number of flashbacks to Batman Begins. But I think he is mistaken to pressume that his audience is not already overly familiar with the previous films.

Valuable time is lost with these flashbacks, and although I do not think that The Dark Knight Rises is too long, I do think it could have spent some of its running time (a whopping 164 minutes) in a more effective manner. On many an occasion, especially in the climactic final hour, Nolan falls back on cheap short-cuts in his staging of the battle over Gotham’s fate. On first viewing these moments may be mistaken for plot holes, but on second viewing they appear to be the result of cramped storytelling and shoddy editing. Unnecessary mistakes that could easily have been solved had Nolan allowed himself more time to stage these scenes properly and less time reinvoking worn down, and this trilogy unworthy, generic stereotypes.

Nolan likes to work with the same people over and over again: Story writer David Goyer, producer Emma Thomas, writer Jonathan Nolan (yes, the brother), composer Hans Zimmer, editor Lee smith and cinematographer Wally Pfister. If I would recommend Nolan to look for another editor if he continues in action films, I must also praise Wally Pfister. Pfister was nominated for an Oscar for The Dark Knight, and he won one for Inception, and in The Dark Knight Rises he delivers again. The vistas of a Gotham under siege are stunning. In cooperation with the special effects team Pfister does something extraordinary: the stunts and effects that in other films seem weightless and immaterial digital constructions have heft and weight and, consequently, realism in TDKR.

Nolan also prefers to work with actors he already knows. Of course he brings back Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox) and Michael Caine (Alfred Pennyworth), but he also calls in the services of his Inception veterans Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard (as business woman and love interest Miranda Tate) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as Gotham city cop John Blake). And there are surprising cameos by some old characters as well. The only major new face is Anne Hathaway. And it must be said that, in such an enormous ensemble, it is Hathaway who stands out, next to Bale and Gorden-Levitt. The other actors suffer from the fact that their roles are perhaps slightly too marginal and underwritten. Tom Hardy is imposing, threatening and scary as Bane, but he can not rival Heath Ledger’s Joker. He should not want to either, and we should not expect it from him.

As an action spectacle, this film is stunning. Big set-pieces involve a chase scene with multiple motorcycles, a street battle between cops and thugs and, perhaps most memorable, a mid-air abduction in the opening sequence. We should not underestimate the contribution of composer Hans Zimmer to these scenes. The master of the genre almost overplays his hand with a thunderous score that drowns out bits of the dialogue, but the crucial word in this sentence is ‘almost’. Empire compared Zimmer’s soundtrack with an earthquake, and that is an appropriate metaphor. The music defies further description.

By not offering us something fundamentally new, apart from some interesting characters, Nolan deprives his film from the depth and the political commentary that The Dark Knight had. Complaints that TDKR is politically reactionary or conservative miss the point that there is actually a shocking lack of politics in this film. If there is any, it only serves as a masquerade of or a detraction from the actual plot, which then is too light to justify the epic ambitions of the film.

But Nolan does deliver emotionally. The fans who have made his films the huge successes that they are have invested in this world and in these characters. And although this individual film may not be able to match the quality of its predecessors, it does succeed in satisfyingly finishing this particular story of Bruce Wayne. Actually, it might be its strongest point (and this is the only small spoiler! I put into this review) that it finishes the story of Bruce Wayne, but not necessarily that of Batman. A relief for the studio and for the fans.

Final verdict: The Dark Knight Rises is a fitting and satisfying conclusion to what we can now call the best superheroe franchise to date. However, it is also demonstrably the weakest link in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and so it is with appropriate heartache that fans have to say goodbye to their holiday fling of three summers.

Update: The Dark Knight Rises

Christopher Nolan has a legendary reputation for secrecy about his future films. Plot details, characters and themes are often not known to the press and the public until the last few, more extensive, trailers arrive. All the more spectacular than that Nolan and his stars Christian Bale (Batman/Bruce Wayne) and Tom Hardy (bad guy Bane) spoke to Empire about the new Batman flick – The Dark Knight Rises – last month. This is what we’ve learned that we did not know yet…

1)      The Dark Knight Rises will take place eight years after the events of The Dark Knight. That is quite a surprise, given the suspenseful state in which the latter film left Batman: his reputation shattered and hunted by the police.

2)      The new film will find Bruce Wayne in a very bad state. Nolan and Bale have spoken about the way in which grief and guilt are the central elements ofWayne’s existence, and how he can no longer live his life like that.

3)      Bane is a terror and a menace. If the Joker was a psychological adversary for Batman, testing him to his principal and ethical limits, Bane will be an enemy that can actually hurt Batman physically. Tom Hardy spoke of the cracking of skulls and the ripping out of spines. Wow. Nolan goes Conan apparently, but Warner Bros. will insist on PG 13 rating and therefore I expect the violence to be mostly suggested rather than lingered on.

The Dark Knight Rises will conclude Nolan’s Batman trilogy that started with Batman Begins in 2005. The film will hit Dutch screens on July 25^th next year. Keep that date free!

 

 

Villains for The Dark Knight Rises revealed?

The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan’s third and last Batman film, is currently in production on set in Pittsburgh. On-set photographers took the following pictures of Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy and Marion Cotillard, in the costumes of their respective characters (and expected villains): Selina Kyle (who may or may not become catwoman), Bane and Miranda Tate. Nolan is very secretive about the plot for the film, so the character descriptions are based on the graphic novels, and may or may not correspond to the role Nolan sees for these characters in his film

Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle:

Selina Kyle is the alter ego of Catwoman, as Bruce Wayne is that of Batman. She has previously been played by Michelle Pfeiffer (in Batman Returns) and Halle Berry (Catwoman). These incarnations saw Kyle having a close relations to cats, but in her first appearance in a graphic novel (Batman #1, 1940) Selina Kyle is simply a very talented, lean burglar with the nickname ‘The Cat’ . The costume in this picture, and the fact that she drives Bruce Wayne’s ‘ bat-bike’  suggest that Nolan has opted for this early incarnation of Selina Kyle.

Tom Hardy as Bane:

In the graphic novels, Bane is a genetically and chemically enhanced super soldier, both physically strong and very intelligent. A version of the character appeared in the dreadfull Batman & Robin, but there he was an animalistic bulk of muscles employed by Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), and not very intelligent. He was played by Jeep Swenson. In the comics Bane was mostly a villain, although he was at some times an ally of Batman. Ominous omen: in the ‘ Knightfall’  series Bane beats Batman and breaks his back…

Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate

Marion Cotillard is playing Miranda Tate, who – official communications – Warner Bros. describe as a businesswoman helping Bruce Wayne with his philantropic work. But this costume, and one other photo in which Cotillard is seen climbing out of the Batmobile, suggest that there may be more to her character. Miranda Tate is rumoured to be an alias for Talia Al-Ghul, the daughter of Ra’s A-Ghul, Batman’s opponent in Batman Begins. The character Talia Al-Ghul has a rich history in the Batman comics, at one point being engaged to Bane, then giving birth to Bruce Wayne’s son, and also crossing over into the Superman universe when working for Lex Luthor. So yes, given that Nolan is involved in producing and writing Zach Snyder’s new Superman film Man of Steel, we might expect anything from Miranda Tate.

The Dark Knight Rises is set for a July 19, 2012 release in The Netherlands. Man of Steel for June 14, 2013 (USA).

Half a Good Movie – the Captain America: The First Avenger review

Marvel’s superhero round-up project The Avengers (set for next year) has so far pulled off some tricks I did not see coming. It is not as simple an accountancy sheet film project as it may seem at first sight. Sure, the idea of bringing all your major superheroes together in one film and giving each of them one or two films before that to introduce the character seems as logical as it seems profitable. But a closer look at the superheroes in question shows some underlying threats.

Marvel’s Avengers aren’t actually first rank characters. There is no space for Spiderman here. Actually, the Hulk is the only one who is obviously an iconic presence and an interesting character. Iron Man, being a billionaire-in-an-invincible-suit type of hero, could easily be seen as a rip-off of DC’s Batman. Thor is as bombastic as he is ridiculous and CaptainAmerica. Well… I’m sure Marvel executives must have had their doubts about the international bankability of a nationalistic propaganda tool who is not so much a flag-waver as he is a flag-wearer.

But as I said: most of the tricks have been pulled off. Ironically it is only the Hulk whose cinematic appearances have not yet been very successful. Ang Lee’s Hulk (2003) was too much of a metaphysical meditation in order to be a good blockbuster, and The Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier, 2008) was too much of an ordinary blockbuster in order to be an interesting film. But Iron Man’s character has been well-sketched in two films starring Robert Downey Jr. and Kenneth Branagh actually managed to balance pantomime and action thrills in Thor.

And the one whose character seemed the less interesting actually gets the best introduction so far. Captain America: The Last Avenger is in its first hour an excellent character study. In the manner of Batman Begins the film takes us well into the second hour before Chris Evans’ titular captain gets to kick evil butt. Unfortunately the film does quickly lose all kinds of interest from that point onwards.

But that first hour is great. A digitally shrunk Evans plays Steve Rogers. Back in 1942 he is a young man too physically weak to join the army, but too much set on standing up against (nazi) bullies to give up. He is drafted into a science project by Szientist-Wiz-A-Dzjerman-Aczent Stanley Tucci. Artificially pumped up to bodybuilder size he is subsequently, and against his will, only used as an army propaganda tool – presenting fund raiser shows and punching Hitler-imitators. Until the moment that he gets the possibility to perform some real heroics. There is some proper comic-book morality here: Rogers is the perfect man to become the perfect soldier exactly because he is weak and puny and therefore knows the importance of justly wielded power.

Evans is convincing, and is supported by an excellent supporting cast: Tucci has a small but nice role, Tommy Lee Jones is a walking cliché as the army general; but who could do that better? Hugo Weaving is outrageously evil as the mutated nazi Red Skull (even the normal nazis think he is a lunatic), and Toby Jones provides some comic relief as Weaving’s assistant. Only Hayley Atwell is a bit shallow and bland as love interest Peggy Carter.

The action in the second hour is not so captivating, mostly because no-one is in real danger at any moment, and we already know how things will end because of a pre-credits prologue set in modern times. Much better is an earlier Brooklyn set chase sequence, because it makes optimal use of the otherwise redundant 3D: The action during this sequence is all set along the axis between foreground and background, rather than horizontal or vertical across the screen. Director Joe Johnston uses the new technology here to evoke a cinematic space in which the hunter and the prey meaningfully relate to each other.

So. The pieces are set, the cards are on the table and we must now brace ourselves for next year, when all these super powers are unleashed in one and the same film. Let us hop that film is more like Iron Man or Captain America than that it is like Iron Man 2 or The Incredible Hulk.

Preview: The Dark Knight Rises

Last week Warner Bros. released the teaser poster for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, and yesterday they also put an HD version of the first teaser online. A shoddy low-quality version had already been leaked to the internet, but its quality was so bad that hardly anything could be seen or heard in it.

The new teaser still tells us little about the plot: there are some images from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and a voice-over by Liam Neeson that comes from the first film. Then: an image of Gary Oldman’s commissioner Gordon on a hospital bed: hurt, weak. He insists that Batman must come back, that they were “in this together”. An unseen Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) doubt whether Batman still exists. Then there are shots of someone climbing out of a hole and of Bane (Tom Hardy). One of his face and one of him approaching a stumbling Batman in an underground location.

And that is it. I am thrilled. I am very much looking forward to the film, yet I am afraid as well. Mostly because of the cast list. The Dark Knight Rises sees Bale returning as Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) and Michael Caine (Alfred) return as well.

Tom Hardy will be Bane, who in the comics is a genetically engineered super-soldier or villain. Anne Hathaway is cast as Selina Kyle, and may transform into Catwoman. Hathaway is new to Nolan, but Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gorden-Levitt are not: they worked with him on Inception. Gorden-Levitt will be police officer John Blake, and Cotillard will play Miranda Tate, in the comics also known as Talia Al Ghul, the estranged daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, Batman’s enemy from Begins. Josh Pence is cast as a young Ra’s, and Liam Neeson is rumoured to return as the old version of the character.

Such long cast lists lead to problems; see last years Iron Man 2. All these well-known actors and characters can hardly all be given the screen time they need to develop their characters properly and play a major role in what still should be the story of Batman. At worst, we could get a mess of a film. However, considering Nolan’s disciplined style of filmmaking that is not likely. More likely is that the film will show an extreme version of the template of The Dark Knight and Inception, in which supporting characters’ emotional or personal development are sidelined in order for them to schematically inhabit the various political, moral or mythological points Nolan wants make.

Something else I fear is that Nolan might move away from the realistic tone of his previous Batman films, and indulge in the more metaphysical themes and plotlines some of the comics (for instance Frank Millar’s “The Dark Knight Returns”) offer. That is something I would not be fond of.

But I had similar fears back in 2007, when I first learned that Heath Ledger, whom I, at the time, only remembered as the teenage heart-throb from 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight’s Tale, would play The Joker, a role made iconic by Jack Nicholson. And I had my doubts about the pitch for Inception as well: A thriller set within the architecture of the mind? And in both cases my doubts and fears were met by great films. Let’s hope Nolan can do it again.

Nolanography

No comment ont his gorgeous little work of love.

Hathaway as Catwoman, Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises

A surprising confirmation yesterday from Warner Brothers concerning the notoriously secretive The Dark Knight Rises project, Christopher Nolan’s third and, probably, last Batman film.

Warner Borthers stated in a press release that Tom Hardy, whose involvement in the film was confirmed earlier (he worked with Nolan on Inception as well) will star as the character Bane, a hyper-intelligent and super-muscular drug addict/villain (in the comic books). Meanwhile Anne Hathaway, of former The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada fame,  will take on the role of Selina Kyle, Bruce Wayne’s troubled love interest. Catwoman is not mentioned in the release, but there seems to be little point in bringing in Seline Kyle if she won’t turn into Catwoman as well.

These choices are surprising. The wise-cracking Hardy was in my opinion a shoe-in for The Riddler, whereas Hathaway has too much of a girl-next-door image to see her strip into a latex cat suit. On the other hand: Nolan’s bad guy choices were contested but ultimately successful previously: Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul were risky baddies for Batman Begins, as they were not as well known as for instance The Joker. Also, the first announcement that Heath Ledger would be The Joker in The Dark Knight was controversial. And we all know how that turned out.

So let’s for now have trust in Nolan’s judgment, and look forward to The Dark Knight Rises, which is due to hit cinema screens (classic and Imax, no 3D thank God) summer 2012. Its cast was already known to star Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon.

Action Franchises: Resurrected!

Three film franchises have been “officially rebooted” this week. To quite some enthusiasm on my behalf I must say.

Christopher Nolan officially admitted that he will direct his third Batman film (after Batman Begins and The Dark Knight). The fact that he is very pleased with the material and the script (which he penned down with his brother Jonathan) suggests that the screenplay is nearly done. Nolan refuses to go into details, although his commitment to the project makes it likely that Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and possibly Morgan Freeman will return for the third film.

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers have a second super hero franchise to boast about: Superman. Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (2006) was a tad of a disappointment, so for the reboot they have now hired Zack Snyder as a director. Snyder already made Dawn of the Dead, 300 and Watchmen for Warners. His Legends of Guardians premiered this week and his forthcoming Sucker Punch is highly anticipated. He is regarded a visionary director on the level of the visuals, but his films are sometimes criticized for lacking in content. However, with a story written by David Goyer (Batman Begins) and Christopher Nolan (him again), and with Nolan as a producer overlooking the project, the quality of the project’s content seems safeguarded.

A third franchise rebooted this week (and let’s just say it is saved from the graveyard) is the Jason Bourne series. After Paul Greengrass quitted the series due to financial disputes with studio Universal, lead actor Matt Damon pulled out to. Now that Universal have signed Tony Gilroy to direct The Bourne Legacy, they hope to persuade Damon to come back. Gilroy did writing work on the previous Bourne films, and directed such thrillers as Michael Clayton and Duplicity. Gilroy allegedly wasn’t happy about the way the former three Bourne films worked out, so this time he’ll have the chance to do things his way (as he also wrote the script for Legacy). I’m not as thrilled by the news as I was about the other two franchises. I remain one of the few people who consider Matt Damon completely unconvincing as an action hero, and I thought the third film (The Bourne Supremacy) was uninspired, with the car chase being a complete copy of the Moscow set chase from the second film. However, if Damon decides not to return, Gilroy and producer Frank Marshall will be forced to find a new original take on the material that may even please me (considering that I really liked Robert Ludlum’s novels).

Together with the recent confirmation that the as of yet untitled ‘Bond 23′, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Daniel Craig, is back online after the financial misadventures of studio MGM, these news flashes confirm that very little will really change in action film land. Thankfully.

A Fascinating Science Experiment – The Inception review

The Internet is teeming with adoring Inception reviews (just do some googling), so let me be very brief here. I saw Inception tonight, and was mightily impressed. The plot is amazingly smart, but never condescending. No red harrings here, as in Nolan’s earlier film The Prestige, which I very much disliked. In director/writer Christopher Nolan’s universe, Inception is closer to The Dark Knight and Batman Begins than to Memento or Insomnia. However, unlike The Dark Knight, Inception fails to deliver emotionally. There is stunning cinematography and cgi visuals, a forceful musical score by Hans Zimmer, and good performances by the actors. Especially the ladies, Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) and Ellen Page (Juno) are very convincing. The plot is more balanced than that of The Dark Knight. The ideas it spawns will linger. And yet.

As I said, Inception does not deliver emotionally. First, I thought this was because of Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as protagonist Dom Cobb, a man who enters another person’s dreams to steal valuable ideas. Cobb is separated from his children, and takes on a last, impossible job to get back to them: Inception, inserting rather than extracting an idea. This difficult job is made more difficult by Cobb’s memories of his deceased wife (Cotillard), which keep invading the dreams he is entering. But it is not DiCaprio’s performance that upsets me, he is doing fine (though not delivering the performance of a lifetime, as Empire suggested). It is the plot. It is simply too smart. Never condescendingly so, but just complicated enough to keep you thinking with the film, instead of engaging emotionally. In the end, you want the inception to work, the project to succeed, and you care less about Dom Cobb, his wife Mal and their children.

Another thing: Inception is really straight forward. It sets up a situation, presents a challenge, sees the assembly of the inception team (Cobb, Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and follows the complicated heist (think Ocean’s Eleven on hallucinating mushrooms) step for step. It is complex, but not deceiving. However, in the final act Nolan seems to take one step into the subconscious too much, and it becomes slightly unclear where the boundaries lie between dreams and ‘limbo’, which is the place you end up if you die too deep inside the subconscious. Perhaps I have missed a line or two explicating this, and I should allow myself a second viewing. But… I don’t think that is fair. I mean: I saw The Dark Knight three times in the cinema. But because I liked it. Not because I though I had missed something.

I am a very experienced and educated film viewer. Watching films critically is what I do professionally, it’s what i’m trained to do. If even I miss a few marks, then perhaps the film is trying a little too hard in being complex. And forcing people to see it again, just to ‘get’ it or achieve satisfaction, it means forcing them to pay a second ticket (9.80 in my cinema, because it is a ‘long’ film). And that feels wrong.

Christopher Nolan is a very gifted film maker and story teller. He has proven on a number of occassions that he can combine complex narrative structures with emotional engagement and satisfaction. However, he may have had a little too much freedom, or a little too much money on this occasion. It would do him no harm to look back on The Dark Knight to see what left the audience in shock and in tears, before he moves on to make his third and final Batman film next year. Because it wasn’t the smartness of the plot, not with me.

Nolan said Inception was his ‘Bond’ movie. I guess he was right. But the 1960s and 70s Bond then, not Daniel Craig’s haunted character from Casino Royale. In the end I think Inception is like a Russian Baboesjka doll, or a science experiment. Fascinating to look at, but it lacks the real magic. That last final spark that characterizes the really really great films

Still, the movie event of the summer? Certainly.

Mindless fun has never been this much fun – The A-team review

“Hello, my name is Jasper and I am an A-Team addict”. “Hello Jasper”. It could very well be a scene in the biographical movie someone is someday going to make about me. And it is set in the first act of this film, when I am approximately nine years old. You could not drag me away from the television when that camp little series was on. Well, you could, and my mom regularly had to, but I wish you couldn’t.

Looking back on a rerun, years later, I did not quite understand what was so cool about it. Being used now to 24 and Prison Break, the A-Team plots were ridiculously slow. There was a lack of real suspense and the characters were one-dimensional. But I still treasured it as a beautiful memory from my youth. So I was not too happy to hear that some pitty fool had decided to make a movie version. I was, actually, rather pissed off. Film had already spoiled my favorite childhood book (the Dutch book De Brief voor de Koning was adapted to a abominable wreck of a film) and now they were going to do the same to my favorite television series.

I was a little relieved when I heard that Ridley and Tony Scott were producing. At least the aren’t total hacks or studio suits. I was pleasantly surprised when I learned about the casting. Liam Neeson as Hannibal, Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) as Face, Ultimate Fighting Champion Quintus ‘Rampage’ Jackson (what’s in a name?) as B.A. Baracus, and, best of all, District 9’s South-African star Sharlto Copley as Murdock. Hell, this could actually work.

And when the trailer blew my mind when I saw it before Kick-Ass, I was convinced. This was going to be THE BEST MOVIE EVER™.

Exploding planes, parachuting tanks, escape scenes, the theme tune and those four guys having a great time doing it all. Magnificent! Of course there is always the grave danger that a trailer presents all the best moments in a film (see Iron Man 2), and that usually means the film sucks. But not this time

Sure, the trailer does present the best moments. But only moments of these moments. The parachuting tank scene takes a couple of minutes (at least, that’s what it felt like) and its comic pay-off line is a surprise and a great tribute to old WW2 films. There is also a brilliant parody by Copley of an unnamed Mel Gibson film (hint: it involves blue paint), and lots more moments of outright fun. Actually, there is as much fun as there is action.

The plot is actually one that forces you to stay with the film and stay concentrated, as the conspiracy that puts the A-Team in military prison ‘for a crime they did not commit’ is an encompassing one, involving paramilitary mercenaries, CIA spooks and army generals. There is a smart critique of the ‘blaming it on the Arab terrorist’ plot as well. The pay-off of the film is brilliant: the A-Team have cleared their name, but are still on the run. So if you have a problem, and if no-one else can help you, and if you can find them… As the best of this decades’ action movies, The A-team sets up the heroes’ background before their real adventures start (see also: Batman Begins, Iron Man, Robin Hood).

Summarized: Brilliant casting, fantastic acting, very funny, very spectacular and absolutely not mindless. Flawed slightly by a chaotic last act, but resolved very well. The A-Team is one of the absolute highlights of this blockbuster summer!

My name is Jasper and I am an A-Team addict. Seriously, I’m going out now to buy the box set of the old series.