50 Greatest Movie Teams
There’s no ‘I’ in any of them…
The A-Team – The A-Team (2010)
The Team: A US Special Forces team that comprises of John ‘Hannibal Smith’ (Liam Neeson), Templeton ‘Face’ Peck (Bradley Cooper), B.A. (Quinton Jackson) and H.M. ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock (Sharlto Copley).
Key Member: Hannibal, clearly.
Not only is he the biggest badass there is, he’s also the one who’s contacted by the CIA for a black ops mission that ends up almost destroying the team.
Greatest Team Work: The final fight at the Los Angeles docks, where the A-Team lay the smack down on Lynch (Patrick Wilson).
Ladykillers – The Ladykillers (1955)
The Team: A team of scholarly conmen led by Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness), including Major Courtney (Cecil Parker), Harry Robinson (Peter Sellers), 'One-Round' Lawson (Danny Green) and Louis Harvey (Herbert Lom).
Key Member: Marcus, of course – he’s the mastermind behind the plan to use Mrs. Louisa Wilberforce’s (Katie Johnson) house during a security van robbery.
Greatest Team Work: Attempting to convince Mrs Wilberforce that they’re an amateur string quartet by sitting together in a room holding instruments while a record plays…
Team Zissou – The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
The Team: The crew of the Belafonte, a research vessel piloted by Steve Zissou (Bill Murray).
His crew include safety expert Pelé dos Santos (Seu Jorge) and second-in-command Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe).
There are also some college interns.
Key Member: Zissou himself, naturally, not least because he’s the one with a mission – to track down the evil Jaguar shark that ate his best bud, Esteban du Plantier.
Greatest Team Work: Attacking the pirates that invaded the Belafonte, and rescuing both “bond company stooge” Bill Ubell and Zissou’s mortal enemy Alistair Hennessey.
Blood Pack – Blade II (2002)
The Team: A crew of vampires who team up with a begrudging Blade (Wesley Snipes) in order to take down the Reapers – a new, dirty breed of vamp.
Key Member: Nyssa Damaskinos (Leonor Varela), who catches Blade’s eye.
Greatest Team Work: The team’s first mission with Blade.
They infiltrate a vampire nightclub where they come face-to-flappy-face with the Reapers.
The Expendables – The Expendables (2010)
The Team: A badass group of fighters in the form of Barney Ross (Sly Stallone), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and Toll Road (Randy Couture).
Key Member: Barney Ross, obviously, for uniting the team in the first place.
Greatest Team Work: Joined by Church (Bruce Willis) and Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger) at the end of Expendables 2, the guys take down evil bad guy Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme).
Classic Monsters – The Monster Squad (1987)
The Team: A collection of classic movie monsters including (initially) Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and the Gillman.
Key Member: Leader Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr).
He’s got grand designs on ruling the world.
Greatest Team Work: The monsters descend on the cathedral where the Monster Squad are attempting an incantation that will destroy them.
Cue fighting galore.
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The Grifters – The Sting (1973)
The Team: Swindlers Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) and Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford).
They’re looking to con insufferably mean mobster Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw).
Key Member: Les Harmon (Harold Gould), an old betting buddy of Hooker’s who helps set Lonnegan up.
Greatest Team Work: The final con itself is a tour-de-force of tension as Lonnegan goes to bet on a horse race, unaware that he’s being set up.
Gondforff and Hooker’s dramatic, gunpowder-fuelled ‘falling out’ is right on the money.
Three Amigos – Three Amigos! (1986)
The Team: Hollywood performers Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short), who play gallant heroes in silent movies.
They’ve got the sparkliest threads you’ve ever seen.
Key Member: Ned, who doesn’t balk at the fact that the Amigos are facing real bandits, and encourages his buddies to do the right thing.
Which involves rescuing kidnapped beauty Carmen (Patrice Martinez).
Greatest Team Work: The Amigos unite with the residents of beset town Santo Poco to take down El Guapo.
Their genius plan involves the townspeople dressing in Amigos costumes to confuse Guapo’s men.
And they’re so chivalrous; they don’t even accept money for the job.
Oceans 11 – Oceans Eleven (2001)
The Team: A team of variously-skilled crooks assembled by Danny Ocean (George Clooney) to rob the Bellagio, The Mirage, and the MGM Grand casinos.
Oh, did we mention he wants to rob all three at the same time?
Key Member: The Amazing Yen (Shaobo Qin), a skilled acrobat who’s pivotal to Danny’s plan.
Not least because he’s the only one small (and bendy) enough to get smuggled into the Bellagio’s vault…
Greatest Team Work : The heists themselves, of course, which take a serious amount of team work.
One of them goes wrong, the whole stack of cards falls.
Watchmen – Watchmen (2009)
The Team: Mortal superheroes The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre (Malin Åkerman) and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode).
Plus big, naked blue megahero Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup).
Key Member: Rorschach, whose investigation into the supposed superhero murders is what drives the story – and leads to a shocking discovery.
Greatest Team Work: Rorschach and Nite Owl confront Ozymandias, and are saved (in a way) by Dr Manhattan.
Which sort of shows why this team is awesome – they’re completely dysfunctional and messed up, but somehow things come to rights anyway. Ish.
Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.
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