It’s Game Time For The A-Team

Posted by David Baxter (dbaxter@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 2, 2009

Joe Carnahan’s A-Team has been gearing up for it’s August shoot by assembling the cast in the last few weeks. We already have Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper, but we may now know who’s not gonna be gettin’ on that damn plane. Fool.

The guys at BlackFilm are saying that they have a ‘highly reliable’ source that points toward rapper turned actor The Game (Jayceon Taylor to his mother). B.A. Baracus was always going to be the hardest part to fill, Mr. T was the most iconic image of the series, so whoever takes the role will inevitably get some flak. Common was originally in the frame but as he’s filming Just Right with Queen Latifah he seems to be out of contention. Ironically we saw The Game and Common together last year in Street Kings, in which Common was strong and The Game was. . . forgettable.

He does seem to have the attitude in place, as he blazes up rap battles with all and sundry, so maybe he can pull off complaining throughout the film. If he cannot then we have two other names to ponder, with Ice Cube and mixed martial artist Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson also in the frame. ‘Rampage’ is not a name I’m familiar with, but IMDB puts him in ‘The King of Queens’ for an episode so thats defintely acting. Mostly though he appears to have been in UFC, which means I may not make another joke about him. Ice Cube may, may, not be the worst idea. I know many are against it but he can act, he just chooses not to most of the time. Boyz N The Hood and Higher Learning were awesome, and he’s in Three Kings! So lets just not think about some of the kiddie fare.

The thing with all of these choices is that they will have many detractors. People who want to ‘jibba jabba’ about how terrible this will be, and I hope they’re wrong. I also hope that come July 2010 I can make a pun about how I love it when a plan comes together.

What do you think? Who’s your choice?

Read more articles by David Baxter