It was marketed as just a campy throwback to the 1980s television series, but buried within The A-Team was a scathing critique of the Iraq War – and its most infamous military contractors.
Anyone who has ever seen The A-Team on television can surely recall the opening narration: “Ten years ago a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit.” On TV, that prosecution and conviction were portrayed as a simple mistake – perpetrated by the military against these members of the special forces because their commanding officer was killed, leaving behind no trace of the controversial orders they were following in the wake of the Vietnam War.
It was sheer dumb bad luck.
But that small screen misfortune took on a much more insidious form in last weekend’s blockbuster. In the movie, the A-Team is actively brought down by a gang of military contractors in Iraq – thugs who wear black, who mock the army soldiers for making less money, and who then frame the A-Team so they can steal a set of recovered metal plates that will allow them to counterfeit U.S. dollars.
These fictional contractors go by the name of Black Forest, but there’s little doubting who the movie is actually alluding to: Blackwater, the controversial private forces that were widely deployed by America across Iraq.
It’s a timely, pointed attack against the company – and also an unexpected one, to arise in the middle of such a cartoonish action spectacle. But The A-Team is merely the latest in a series of pop entertainments to turn their focus on the Iraq War. Even Prince of Persia, the far-flung desert fantasy, asserted itself as a cutting commentary on pre-emptive war, faulty intelligence and non-existant WMDs.