Simply Perfect

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Excellent but underrated film

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The American military is perhaps the most bloated organization in the United States. When it is used to fight wars, there is no finer in the world. Unfortunately, when not fighting, the Officers and senior staff are anything but. In this film Director Richard Benjamin takes a realistic look at the brainless system by which the Military waste's taxpayer's money. The weapons they choose are hardly ever chosen for their effectiveness or safety. Indeed, they are neither given a hard, fixed budget which they cannot cross. Instead they are allowed to splurge to their heart's content. This film is a case in point. The military decides to create a new troop carrier. They call it the Bradley Fighting unit. Kelsey Grammar plays Maj. Gen. Partridge a man who couldn't care less what a vehicle costs, so long as it promotes jobs and his career. However, Congress puts Lt. Col. James Burton (Cary Elwes) in charge of making the vehicle safe. Viola Davis, plays Sgt. Fanning Burton's secretary and together they seek to carry out their orders. John C. McGinley and Tom Wright are there to insure that they fail. Richard Schiff plays Gen. Smith who bends over backwards to please Partridge and the brass hats. Richard Benjamin is Secretary of Defense who is ambivalent about the entire project. The movie is a running commentary about how things really go on behind doors. Failure to play the game results in no promotion, recognition or cushy job after military discharge. Fighting a losing battle Col. Burton nevertheless tries to built a safe vehicle and one sympathies with him, but while no one on the hill cares, it is the fighting man in combat who will ultimately pay the price. A must see film for anyone who does give a dam. ****

First of all, I've read some comments saying it's not funny and even one comparing it with a Steve Martin movie. It's a sarcastic and ironical humor, and if you only like Three Stooges only( people may like it and also like other type of comedy) type of jokes, don''t watch it, you'll miss the funny parts. Now reviewing it : I'm Brazilian and knowing how politics works down here it's very believable whats happening on screen. Which makes it funnier. The tests and the hearing are hysterical, I coudn't stop laughing, the general explaining himself to the senator it's worth the movie. And to think that this movie was so low profile when it was delivered, it makes me sad. It's a must see, if not for the funny parts(not everyone has a sense of humor), at least for the message: watch your government very, very close, they usually screw up.

I have two places I can begin: My assessment of the accuracy of this movie, and my true opinion of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.This movie couldn't be closer to the truth. Why in this great age of technology don't we have much better things than we do? Several reasons which will probably always be with us -- greed, competition, and lack of communication! Once an idea is determined to be "bad" the idea should be forgotten in favor of a better one! The Bradley was a bad idea that everyone kept making worse instead of just saying "hey, this thing isn't practical, lets try to think of something better." For over a decade they wasted their time on this death trap, and 14 BILLION dollars...yes that's billion with a "B." (one of my favorite lines) Another was when the Bradley was described as "A troop transport that can't carry troops, a scout that's too conspicuous, and loaded with enough firepower to level...a small city..." The problem is everyone hates a whistle-blower. No one wants to be the one to take a stand, and that's where this movie comes in.The pentagon thought that the Army needed some outside evaluation to make a more fair judgment of how the Bradley development was progressing. They send in a young Lt. Col. in the Air Force, played by Elwes, to write a non-biased report. The problem is the damn thing was a disaster! There was nothing he could find that was positive to say about it. The problem is the Army wouldn't let him run and true combat tests on the vehicle because they knew it would fail. They just wanted to get it into production ASAP so that they could be seen as people who could "get the job done." Fearing for the soldier's lives, who would be the ones operating the first version of this vehicle, he waged his own personal war against the people in such a hurry to rush it into development.Remember one of this movie's tag-lines, this movie would be funnier if it weren't true, and by the end you'll be both thrilled, and disappointed...(remember to read the epilogue)

Cary Elwes, who sounds like a cross between Martin Sheen and Richard Dreyfus, is pretty good as the earnest innocent, and Kelsey Grammar is superb as his immediate boss, blustering and puffed up and brimming with admiration for ex-military comrades who have gone into the private sector and make enough money to "buy and sell us ten times over." Supporting players are adequate, especially the full colonel and the major who are Grammar's flunkies. The two are outstanding as they wince, roll their eyes, and fiddle their fingers nervously when things begin to go wrong. The story involves an attempt on the part of the military to produce a simple, speedy personnel carrier. Bit by bit, overweight generals beef it up with additional heavy firepower, TOW missiles, more armor and ammunition, portholes for firing through, amphibious capacity, and whatnot, until the original objective is lost sight of, there being not much room left for personnel to be carried. The number of carried personnel dwindles from 11 to 6 in order to make room for additional ammunition and equipment. The thing is also a death trap. It is made partly of lightweight aluminum which, as the Brits discovered in the Falklands, gives off toxic gas when it burns, and it burns readily, as it would if, say, it were hit by an anti-tank round.The R&D program rolls along for 17 years and costs 14 billion dollars. And test results look pretty good based, as they are, on deceit. Elwes, as Burton, the congress-appointed rather junior overseer, fights the bureaucracy all the way and in the end has the congressional hearings he's been pushing toward. Yes, it looks like a happy ending. But we are left wondering as the epilogues appear on the screen. Burton was forced to retire. Grammar's character was promoted. The Bradley was put into trimmer shape before the Gulf War and this reduced casualties, but plans were already underway to beef it up again. According to the Bradley web site provided by the army, the beefing up has been completed. The way it is now described closely resembles the version that Elwes fought. It still has a dangerously high profile for a scout vehicle, a heavy turret, TOW missiles that must be reloaded from outside the vehicle, aluminum parts, inflatable tubes to make it amphibious, and it still can carry only 6 infantrymen. (The scout version designed for the cavalry can only carry two.) Caspar Weinberger, played by Richard Benjamin, is portrayed as honest and determined. But his orders to his subordinates are vacuous. Like, "I want reports on this vehicle, and I want them soon." So what? In real life, Weinberger was known as "Cap the Knife" when he ran the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, because he cut so many programs to save the taxpayer's money. At Defense, he lost the nickname and became much more generous with the taxpayer's money, indulging the military and business whims despite criticism from the taxpayers. People like Weinberger were ultimately responsible for the messy process we see in this movie. As sociology, it's pretty funny. As a more or less true story it would be ridiculous if its implications weren't so tragic.