The Pentagon Wars
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Actor: Cary Elwes, Kelsey Grammer, Olympia Dukakis, Richard Benjamin, Tom WrightBrand: HBO Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Stereo; French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-31
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 91472
Studio: Hbo Home Video
DVD Reviews of The Pentagon Wars
DVD Review: "I Want to Tell You a Story About Phil"
Summary: 4 Stars
While critics panned this movie, I found it well worth watching and consider it one of my favorites. The movie is based on the book "The Pentagon Wars" by Col. Jim Burton. The point of Burton's book was that the Pentagon seemed to be more about procuring new weapons than it was about defending America. What happens in the book is even more incredible than what is desccribed in the movie as to the types of things various companies attempt to foist on the American fighting man.
As an engineer, I found the movie hilarious because many times, rational decisions have nothing to do with what the people operating machines need or really want. The sequence that shows how the Bradley Fighting Vehicle went from being a simple troop transport to a Scout and a whole host of other items is true to life and it represents how designers must often try to accommodate even the most ridiculous requests. In truth, many ideas or features are concocted by people on the top with little understanding or regard for operational or maintenance forces (whether we are discussing a tank or any other complicated engineered equipment).
The movie shows Col. Burton's personal struggles to get the BFV tested under combat conditions rather than the tests proposed by other "experts". To make the story more dramatic, the types of testing performed by other "experts" borders on the farcical in the movie. In the book, many of the tests performed by the Army were based on computer models of ballastic impact. Burton was able to prove that the computer generated models did not work. I would assume that the movie used the stupid tests to play up the drama.
The most touching part of the story comes at the end when Col. Burton gives a speech to the troops (responsible for BFV testing) reminding them not to take the easy way out based on the bad experiences of "Phil" with a different weapon system (the M-16 rifle) which did not work when he needed it to. The movie ending is particularly touching.
Having said this, please understand that while the movie does a great job lampooning the military, there is similar (and far less talked about) waste in procurement associated with everyday things one might find at the state and government level on all types of public projects. Making a movie about waste in a public housing project is probably not easy to do so the military becomes the target. A good case can be seen when one state payed close to 135K to rennovate a single bathroom at a State Park. When a radio talk show host called various contractors and askesd for their prices, naturally they were much lower. The real reason for the high price? All types of government projects require far more paperwork (politely translated as "oversight"). Contractors know this and build it into their price. If such things can happen with the simple rennovation of a bathroom, why would we expect something like a complicated weapon system to be different (when one considers the millions of pages of rules and regulations to be followed)?
One need only look at the financing behind the movie project to see the usual left-wing suspects up to their old tricks.
I did not like the way the Army officers involved were portrayed. Most soldiers (even those at the "Puzzle Palace") are decent people trying to do a difficult job. The movie portrays these guys as venal buffoons. While Col. Burton's book gives us a peak behind the scenes, I felt that the dramatic portrayal of the 2 Army officers in the movie was over the top.
Description of The Pentagon Wars
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