La miglior difesa è... la fuga

I actually had a bit part in this film. It was filmed in Israel around 1985 in the desert and I got to work with Eddie Murphy. In one scene I appear (for about 10 seconds)standing in a jeep behind Eddie Murphy's jeep. I only mention this because I told my parents to see the film in the theater. My biggest regret is that they had to pay FULL PRICE to sit through an awful experience. I would not recommend this film to anyone.

This is one of those few films from my childhood that made a strong impression on me, mainly for the Eddie Murphy's WAM joke. I remembered it had something to do with a faulty new tank in the Iraq war and US engineers at home desperately trying to make something work in it. Oh the good memories.

But now that I rewatched it, well… Eddie Murphy and the tank take up only 1/5 of the movie, while everything else is dedicated to a poor plot about a looser caught up in a spy novel, later dropped and substituted for poor planning by the ministry of defense.

Besides Murphy tank escapade, only the Russian spy was entertaining to watch, but he only appeared in a couple of scenes. Everything else was a chore to watch. The special effects aren't that impressive. The idiot boss is just intolerably dumb. The portrayal of foreigners were horrid. And I have no idea why the wife and child subplot was even necessary, because you could literally replace them with a sealing fan to resolve the main flaw. Oh… Guess I forgot those parts for a reason.

One of the main problems was the editing of events – the tank was developed after the main plots got resolved, but the movie was spliced like it all was happening simultaneously. Unfortunately that meant that the tank flaws were already resolved, or not, so there was really no suspense.

Let's just say the best parts of the movie were about 5-10 minutes long and I would not have missed anything rewatching it. At some points I even confused Dudley Moore's acting for a Rowan Atkinson impersonation. That confusion kept me more entertained then the actual movie.

At least some of it is good to riff over.

Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy are two entirely different looking actors who have two things in common. They were both hugely popular box office comedy stars throughout the 1980's and they were both part of the cast of this 1984 Paramount release. If these two comedy titans had any scenes together, that could've made the film really great but despite that setback, the film is not a total waste. Two stories are told in the film. One has to do with technology programmer Wylie Cooper's (Moore) chance encounter with a man who's on the run from some shady corporate criminals and how Cooper's life changes for the better and for the worse after the encounter. The other is set two years later and has to do with American soldier Landry (Murphy) test driving a faulty experimental tank that Cooper had invented and accidentally driving it into the middle of a battlefield. That tank (Cooper building it and Landry using it) is what the two stories have in common. The most major complaint about this film is its constantly shifting from one story to the other thus confusing some viewers. I managed to follow along though and if anybody who's thinking of seeing this one can too, you may find both leading actors in fine form. Just don't expect the comedy sparks of their far more successful individually starring vehicles including "Arthur" and "Beverly Hills Cop."

An ironic aspect of this otherwise indigestible flop is that the final concept, although created as a desperate, expos facto attempt to inject life into the film, might have actually worked, had it been in the plan from the beginning.

Although the future plot line (or present, according to how you wish to perceive it) involving Murphy was filmed later, the concept of one plot line's actions having a direct result on another in the future could have been interesting. All it needed was a script, production values, creative foresight and inspired performances by the actors. This film, unfortunately, had none of the above.

Moore is convinced that a device slated to be installed on a tank is defective in its design, and must try to fix it before it's built and put into use. Two years in the future, sure enough, Murphy is driving a tank which uses this very device. Will Moore improve the design in time to save Murphy's life? Well, it's little confusing to flash back and forth between these plot lines, but they do manage to culminate into a semi-climactic moment, but much too late to save the viewer from mindless boredom.

No amount of alcohol can render this film bearable. I saw Eddie Murphy on Letterman a few years after this dog was released, talking about why he has to be careful with which scripts he accepts. He said, "A few years back I made a film called Best Defense. And it was bad. [looks into camera] REAL bad!"