Name-Divyansh Waghmare Roll.

no-220

Batch-B2 date-

Country:
USA
Language:
English
Release Date:
28 February 1998 (USA)
Also Known As:
Die Bradley-Affair
Filming Locations:
Camp Roberts, San Miguel, California, USA

The Pentagon Wars wavers uncertainly between broad satire and savage exposé. From
the nonfiction book by retired Air Force colonel James G. Burton, Jamie Malanowski and
Martyn Burke have confected a teleplay about $14 billion of overspending on the design,
development, and production of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle – a sort of troop-transport
supertank – and seventeen years of test-rigging to con us into thinking it wasn’t a death
trap for anybody who happened to be inside when it came under enemy fire. At this
metastasis of genuine scandal, comic styles, and military-industrial bungling and cover-
up, we don’t know whether to laugh or rage.
Part of the confusion is the fault of Richard Benjamin, who directs and also stars himself
as Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s less-than-humorous secretary of Defense. Part is
the fault of Kelsey Grammar, who insists on playing the perfidious Army general Partridge
as an odd amalgam of Orson Welles and Captain Queeg, while Cary Elwes plays Colonel
Burton as a straight-arrow whistle-blower transferred to Alaska for asking too many
questions and Olympia Dukakis plays the chairperson of the House Armed Services
Committee with an incredulity bordering on the comatose. There is a Deep Throat, afraid
to go public with what he knows about the BFV but disgusted enough to alert Burton to
fuel tanks filled with water, and ammunition filled with sand.

On the serious side, Israelis rewrite all the specs before they buy these lethal duds. On the
burlesque side, one battlefield test turns sheep into instant mutton. And for Frank Capra
purposes, the soldiers on the test range will conspire with Burton and sabotage Partridge,
just in time for the Bradley to roll off to duty in the Gulf War as something more than a
snowmobile with cleats.

Beginning of the movie shows the US Army Major General Partridge being questioned by
the House Armed Services Committee. During the questioning, US Army’s practice of
falsifying test results to secure quick induction of new weapons into service is brought to
light. Examples shown include infrared antitank missile, where a target vehicle was
artificially heated to extreme temperatures to allow the missile to find its target; a Pave
way laser guided bomb which was hoisted above the target by a crane as it would not hit
otherwise. Finally, the Bradley fighting vehicle is brought up, upon which flashbacks
begin.

Flashbacks start with Colonel Burton meeting General Partridge. Immediately, General
tries to win Burton over, talking to him almost as an old friend. He also tries to push his
own ideas – namely, that weapons testing is unnecessary and that Bradley should go into
production as-is – onto Burton, as well as trying to buy him by talking about people that
he (Partridge) helped get into important positions within military and military industry.
He also gives Burton some documents about weapons in testing – all from the official US
Army point of view – and asks him to “return the favor” by giving Bradley some “extra
attention” to enable deployment as soon as possible.

After that, the movie focuses on Burton’s attempts to secure honest and transparent
evaluation process. During that entire time, high officers in the US Army spend time trying
to prevent precisely that, and impede Burton’s investigation. Tricks shown as being used
include using substandard weapons, testing the vehicle without ammunition or fuel
onboard and overloading Burton with mountains of documents so that he wouldn’t have a
time to read it. They also try to reassign Burton to Alaska. However, Burton also gets help
from within the US Army, but the officer helping him tries hard to stay anonymous in
order to save his position. This allows him to discover Army’s tricks (such as ammunition
being used not being capable of penetrating an ammunition shed door). He manages to
bypass the Army censorship as well as to shame the troops into giving him an honest
evaluation right under the officers’ noses, with spectacular results – Bradley blows up,
thus failing the tests. As a result, Bradley is redesigned to make it more survivable, which
reduced casualties during the Gulf War. Pentagon got 1 billion USD for the Bradley
redesign, officers involved with it were either promoted or went to defense industry and
colonel Burton was forced to retire.