Film review: The A-Team

'I LOVE it when a plan comes together," says Liam Neeson, although it's unlikely he had The A Team in mind when planning his career after Schindler's List. Do you remember The A Team? A Reagan-era piece of escapism, the weekly TV show centred on four soldiers of fortune on the run after being accused of a crime they didn't commit, who helped other people, usually with a van and some guns. The only episode I saw in its entirety guest-starred Boy George as himself, helping the Team kick their way into a building. That must have been one weak door.

For more than a decade they have been trying to bring The A Team to the big screen for reasons that have less to do with honouring a beloved cult than with summer being the season for explosives, guns and fireballs.

Like the original TV series, despite the heavy reliance on ammo, no-one really dies in The A-Team - mostly because the bad guys are such poor shots they couldn't hit a bus from the inside. Some things have changed however - or at least been updated. On TV the gang were framed during the Vietnam War, now the fit-up has something to do with printing counterfeit dollars in Iraq. The four alpha personalities at the heart of the show have also been reshaped: the cigar-chewing leader "Hannibal" Smith is now an attractively silvered Neeson instead of George Peppard. Bradley Cooper is handsome ladies' man Face, Sharlto Copley is the insane pilot Murdock, and Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson replaces Mr T as the muscleman BA Baracus.

Baracus was the only truly memorable character in the original, a perpetually angry man in a Mohican with more gold jewellery than the Argyle Arcade and a violent fear of flying. So it's odd that, although he still has to be tempted with food or drugged to the eyeballs in order to get on board, Jackson goes out of his way not to imitate Mr T.

The rest of the plot need not detain us for long, with the boys shooting and scooting from Iraq to Germany to the US, all looking suspiciously like Vancouver hosting a series of theme nights. On their tail is Jessica Biel as an army officer with a personal grudge after being dumped by Face. And Patrick Wilson is a slippery CIA agent who may have framed the Team. But mostly we're here for stunts, including an upside-down helicopter chase and a tank the guys stand on while it parachutes to the ground. Throughout the film a lot of things explode, but the movie itself is so formulaic that it never detonates. Yet I'm inclined to give The A Team a pass, since it's nowhere near as awful as last year's rocket-socket blockbuster Transformers sequel.

"They specialise in the ridiculous," sniffs Biel. Ain't that the truth, dear? And after this and The Karate Kid, hopefully other 1980s fare such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Knight Rider and Moonlighting will remain off-limits. By the way, two of the original A-Teamers pop up for cameo parts in this movie, but neither of them are Mr T. He's no fool.

On general release from Wednesday

• This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday on 25/07/2010