The A-Team

2010, US, directed by Joe Carnahan

The plot, and many of the action scenes, are almost incomprehensible, but there's the occasional pop of visual interest -- the sudden appearance of a face in closeup, or a bit of aestheticized carnage -- and intermittent amusement from either the references to the silly TV source material or, most often, the antics of Sharlto Copley's Murdoch. Like the vast majority of action comedies, though, this can't figure out a way to marry the sometimes brutal violence of the set pieces with the jokey tone of the connecting material, failing to note that what helped the original series carry off this trick was the fact that the violence was considerably less terminal in nature -- resulting in bruises rather than bodybags.