As the history of Hollywood richly demonstrates, almost any sort of work can inspire screen adaptation - novels, plays, nonfiction narratives, poems, popular songs, comic books, and of course, other movies. Each of those sources presents particular problems for cinematic reincarnation; movies based on plays, for example, usually reveal their origin in heavy reliance on dialogue, static settings, and the isolation of a limited cast. The popular contemporary use of comic books, to take another example, tends to create a boldly graphic narration - entirely appropriate for film - while also betraying a weakness in characterization and context.

"The A-Team," based on a successful 1980's television series, exhibits its heritage in a general failure to construct a coherent story convincing enough to fill up two hours of screen time. A weekly television show, inherently episodic in content and structure, depends on an essentially repetitive situation and course of action, along with an established, familiar cast who behave according to expectations the audience learns from watching them over a span of time. For an hour-long action-adventure series, each week the principals face a new, well defined challenge which they conquer within their defined time limit, often with small climaxes and suspenseful teasers immediately preceding the commercials.

The new movie resurrects the situation and people from what now seems a distant past, but somehow never provides enough simple storytelling to make them at all interesting. Instead of transcending the limitations of its origins, the filmmakers apparently decided to turn the movie into a series of repetitive actions as if it were a mere extension of the TV show; as a result, like others of its kind, the movie never finds a way to end, in effect duplicating itself over and over.

The picture begins with a bang when four former Army Rangers combine as the team of the title in a furious gun battle with some sort of Mexican military unit that then turns into a shootout between helicopters along the border. Strangely, it then pauses, explaining that eight years and eighty missions later, the A-Team now prepares to leave Iraq, but takes on one last job, which occupies them for the rest of the movie, the capturing of a set of engraved plates used to counterfeit American hundred dollar bills.

Those plates in the great Hitchcock tradition of the McGuffin serve as the excuse for all the pyrotechnics that actually provide the substance of the film. In the contemporary manner, "The A-Team" consists essentially of one confusing battle after another, as they combat a group of Arabs, a corrupt CIA agent and his gang, and possibly some other people (it's hard to keep them all straight) and spray thousands of bullets all over the sets. The gunfire, explosions, and engine noises reverberate so loudly that the actors, who tend either to shout or mumble, seldom speak clearly, and the plot makes virtually no sense at all.

An established star with a powerful physical presence, Liam Neeson seems wasted in the role of Hannibal Smith, the team leader; strangely, George Peppard, the original Hannibal, actually filled his admittedly small screen more convincingly, with a pleasing touch of irony. One other notable actor, Sharlto Copley, who performed brilliantly in "District 9," plays Murdoch, a positively loony member of the crew, in a distressingly maniacal style.

In the midst of all the spectacle, two really quite remarkable sequences deserve at least a modicum of attention. In one, the team hijacks a gigantic cargo plane carrying a tank; when the Air Force shoots down the plane, they deploy the tank's parachutes and fly it down to a safe landing. In another, Murdoch orchestrates the showing of a 3-D movie in his psychiatric ward; just as a truck hurtles toward the audience, the A-Team, in their own truck, drive through the wall, entering the movie within the movie.

The most depressing aspect of the picture derives from the fact of its existence, that it represents yet another example of contemporary filmmaking, which constantly escalates the stunts and effects, substituting noise for meaning, fireworks for art. As the summer rolls on and the blockbusters accumulate, all that cinematic hyperbole overwhelms such matters as good writing, competent acting, adequate intellectual, and emotional content - in short the traditional elements of film.