The Pentagon Wars
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Movie Reviews of The Pentagon Wars
Movie Review: Hilarious Film!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been waiting for this DVD to come out for a very long time! It is a hilarious movie based on a true story about the creation of the Bradley war tank. It shows how the promotion system in the military used to push for new war products to be used, even if they were not acceptable for use, and the struggle of one man to do the right thing. You will not stop laughing while watching this movie! Movie Review: jtpaladin is nuts!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Not only is The Pentagon Wars one of the funniest movies, but it has a twisted sense of how military tests programs can get when Congress and the Upper Brass try to control spending on test programs. In fact this movie is more relevant today in highlighting why our troups go into harms way without the equipment the need (lack of armor on vehicles in Iraq).
Now, I may not be a self proclaimed "military analysis" like jtpaladin, but I did spend 5 years in a military test program. While the movie takes a comedic approach, it is remarkable close to how a test program works.
I saw this movie when it first came out and thought it was a hoot! The mix of charaters and the way the movie pokes fun at the simplest items (love the sheep specs) keeps it going from start to finish. Then I went to work on the test program, and everytime we had to make a change to the item, I thought of this movie. ROFLOL!!!
I only have one complaint about this movie:
WHERE IS THE DVD RELEASE?
Movie Review: Hilarious
Summary: 5 Stars
Coming, as I do, from `across the pond,' I must confess that I am not a fan of American humour, but this film is absolutely hilarious. It seems to me that HBO have used comedy to tell a frighteningly true story that differs, only in detail, from the `expert' reviewer's opinions.
We all know that Holywood has never let the facts interfere with the telling of a story. As a keen amateur medieval historian I frequently cringe in disbelief, and often get irate, with their interpretation of historical fact. I have yet to see an historical interpretation that is concerned solely with the facts, and does not contain some (or even a great deal of) `poetic licence.' However such licence does not necessarily make a film `bad', after all we are talking about entertainment, aren't we?
Pentagon Wars is funny, even hilarious, entertaining and thought-provoking, and despite what anybody else may say, it is well worth the 5 stars I award it.
Movie Review: Funny, but not accurate
Summary: 2 Stars
No question there were alot of funny moments in this film based on the book by Col. Burton but as you can easily guess, if it's an HBO film, there will be more fiction than fact.Here's some info from a military analyst who saw the film:
"1) How accurate was the movie?
Not at all. I was driven to take notes after the first few minutes and got over sixty substantive errors. The producers took Col. Burton's simplistic but compelling memoir, dumbed it down, took dramatic licence with a lot of things that didn't need it, goofed around with the chronology, and apparently had a head-on collision with an office full of libel lawyers who demanded even more blurring than there already was. The
result is a mockery both of the very real issues surrounding the Bradley and of Burton's very genuine display of moral courage.
I'd say it was also a piss-poor excuse for a comedy, but I'm a military historian, not a movie critic.
2) What were the actual problems with the Bradley and how were they resolved?
Most of the actual problems with the Bradley - aside from mechanical teething problems that any armored vehicle has - arose from the fact that no one really had a clear idea of what an infantry fighting vehicle was supposed to do at the time the project was started in 1964 - it wasn't even called that at the time; all that was really clear was that current armored personnel carriers and armored infantry doctrine weren't going to be well-suited to the armor-rich, artillery-rich, and likely nuclear/biological/chemical battlefield environment expected in a putative European war versus the Warsaw Pact.
This uncertainty led to incredible amounts of bureaucratic muddle and intraservice chest-thumping within the Army - the movie version of _The Pentagon Wars_ at least manages to get a little of that across, in spirit, anyway - and kept the project on the back burner all through Vietnam, when the Army wasn't paying a lot of attention to mechanized infantry issues
anyway. This problem was exacerbated by a parallel muddle on the armor side of the service, which had repeatedly failed to field a satisfactory vehicle for its armored cavalry units.
By this time (~1975) both branches were faced with block obsolescence of their existing vehicles, so they had to meld their requirements into what was essentially a single vehicle, which became the Bradley. Incorporating all the necessary capabilities into a single chassis that had originally
been built to tight dimensional limits due to rather questionable airportability concerns and an equally questionable requirement for amphibious capability required a lot of tradeoffs that didn't satisfy purists very much.
How were these problems dealt with? A number of ways. Some of them were doctrinal: the Army looked for ways to exploit the capabilities of the vehicle and nurse its limitations. Some were technological: in particular, various survivability enhancements were added at a cost in weight and money. Some were simply bureaucratically defined out of existence. How successful these measures has been is still the subject of debate, some of it in this very newsgroup; see Deja News for
details.
For that matter 3) Did any Bradley's sustain hits from enemy fire in the Gulf war and how did they and the crew survive those hits? It's a hard question to answer meaningfully; BFVs of various marks served in the theater, and a good number were hit in combat, often by weapons and at aspects that wouldn't be survivable by main battle tanks - Bradleys took more friendly fire than any other vehicle type. In general, they stood up to what they were designed to stand up to; the debate is still whether the design requirements were appropriate." Lastly, anyone that would try and draw a correlation between the BFV and a national missile defense system would find themselves comparing apples to oranges since we had an accurate and functional ABM system for a number of years until eliminated by the ABM treaty.Movie Review: NO DVD?!!
HBO Better get the act together and come up with a dvd real soon, i'm not impressed with them at all. Well enough of that now, great film and Kelsey Grammer and company did a fine job here. So get the movie. DON'T WASTE YOU TIME TRYING TO FIND IT ON DVD!
Summary: 5 Stars