The A-Team (film)/Headscratchers


 * Just how, exactly, did Hannibal think a CIA operative was supposed to get the team's record cleared?
 * REALLY SMALL HINT: CIA
 * Who are not part of the military chain of command or the Joint Chiefs. Short of carrying an order from the President or the Supreme Court, there's nothing keeping the Army from responding to any CIA entreaty with "No. Go away." And even if the CIA had that kind of power over the Armed Forces, why did Hannibal think J. Random Spook there had that kind of pull?
 *  SLIGHTLY BIGGER HINT: CIA . Pulling some strings hither and yon, even with a slightly disgraced spook, would work.
 * For that matter, why wasn't Hannibal suspicious of from the moment he approached him in prison? If he were really on their side, he would've stepped in during the team's court martial and verified Gen. Morrison's orders.
 * He was probably nearly burned or chewed out for a while.
 * He likely didn't. But he probably relied on that he would be able to come up with something as long as he got out of prison.
 * Why did the CIA at the end? Was he acting on their orders? Too good an agent to lose? Knew too much to risk him trading secrets for leniency?
 * You answered your own question!
 * From the new Lynch's response of "Who?", this troper got the impression that they weren't bailing him out so much as making him vanish.
 * Why the elaborate frame job for the team? If wanted the plates so badly, why not just let the team hand over the plates and quietly "lose them"?
 * Cleaning up loose ends and possible witnesses.
 * Did Hannibal's plan of rescuing Face at the beginning of the movie count on a car to drive over a dirt road in the general direction of many corrupt cops, or would he have been there on time if he kept jogging...? Maybe BA drove through the plot hole and ended up on the dirt track.
 * Hannibal makes it clear that, by this point, he's improvising (at least in regards to saving Face). Face screwed up his plan by trying to save the girl. BA showing up was pure luck.
 * In the end, they "expose" Lynch by having him "execute" Morrison (Murdoc in Disguise) inside a container and then lifting up the container, exactly as Face planned. Small Question: Didn't the whole ship explode three minutes ago, with containers spilling all over the peer? How the hell did they set this up? Where did they get the crane, how did they even find the container? What the heck?
 * The container was marked in some way, and they found a crane somewhere while Lynch's little tableau was going on. Remember, their original plan presumably depended on being able to distinguish the container and using a crane.
 * What was with the logic on retrieving the plates at the start of the film? Sosa comes in, adamant that the plates are her responsibility and warning the A-Team not to get involved. Instead, Pike and his team of mercenaries is picked. What. Why are civilian contractors being given a mission to recover highly sensitive government property? Sosa outright acknowledges that the A-Team is the best there is. Unless she's snubbing them because she dated Face, why not just ask them to get the plates for her? They're happy, she's happy, her superiors are happy. It's like she's concerned that the A-Team is going to steal them, which either makes her a fucking psychic (at least partially) or a total bitch.
 * That is assuming that Sosa had any involvement in who was available to send. Just assuming that she could pick anyone in the world to recover the plates is far fetched. Even further, chances are that if you were in a warzone where civilian contractors were operating side by side with the a squad of insanity, they are all there for a reason. It's not like she walked in thinking "Oh gee, it's nice to see Hannibal and Face taking a vacation in the middle of the warzone".
 * If she, personally, was tasked with recovering the plates, then she should have had say in who goes, or even organized it. For the two groups of nutjobs, there was a fully-staffed base of trained soldiers. If she wasn't responsible for the choice, why even send her? That would only make sense if she was there for pickup, in which case she has no real authority to be getting on Face's case about a matter he (at the time) knew nothing about and she had no reason to suspect otherwise. It honestly sits better if you think Lynch purposefully orchestrated Pike being tasked with retrieving the plates, otherwise the whole scenario just reeks of stupidity.
 * For that matter, why was Sosa demoted after the fiasco? Pike betrayed them and the A-Team violated standing orders. Why is she being punished for the criminal misconduct of others?
 * If the agencies involved needed to pin the fiasco on, it would be easier to pin it on one individual in charge than a dead guy and three guys who are essentially black ops for insane operations. It happens all the time in other jobs.