The Aeroplane Film Review: The A-Team

The problem with remakes, especially of nostalgically remembered classics, is that they often over-play the ingredients of the classic to the point where they dominate the modern version and the cake as a whole does not taste good. I recently caught an episode of the original TV series and it was preposterous—helicopter gun fights over an LA suburb resolved with the bad guys crashing into a cliff but somehow crawling intact from the burning wreckage—surely Hollywood would take this as a licence to produce the worst kind of implausible nonsense that is present in every big explosion action film?

Surprisingly they did not. The modern version retains but updates the humour and of course the action is thoroughly modern. It’s still ridiculous but entertainingly so, and actually more plausible than many straight-action capers and Liam Neeson is on wicked form as Hannibal. My only disappointment was the rousing theme tune made only a single appearance, but perhaps that was a fair price for them not overplaying the nostalgia.