Best Defense

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Best Defense
Bestdefenseposter.jpg
Theatrical release poster by Steven Chorney
Directed by Willard Huyck
Screenplay byWillard Huyck
Gloria Katz
Based onEasy and Hard Ways Out
by Robert Grossbach
Produced byGloria Katz
Starring
Cinematography Donald Peterman
Edited by Sidney Wolinsky
Music by Patrick Williams
Production
companies
Cinema Group Ventures
Eddie Murphy Productions
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date
  • July 20, 1984 (1984-07-20)(U.S.)
Running time
94 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$18 million
Box office$19,265,302 (domestic) [1]

Best Defense is a 1984 American action comedy film, starring Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy. [2] The original music score was composed by Patrick Williams. [2] It was released by Paramount Pictures. [2]

Contents

The film follows the lives of two different characters, who never interact. One of the two sub-plots involves an engineer who tries to develop a new gyroscope for tanks, and eventually uses the design plans of a murdered competitor. The other subplot involves a tank commander who accidentally wanders into a war zone while trying to navigate a poorly designed tank.

Plot

The film takes place as two parallel plots separated by a couple of years: In 1982, Wylie Cooper (Moore) is an engineer developing a targeting system on a tank for the United States Army. In 1984, Murphy is US Army Lt. T.M. Landry, an American tank commander sent to Kuwait to demonstrate the "XM-10 Annihilator," America's latest main battle tank, which is equipped with Cooper's system. Because of the tank's poor design and shoddy construction, Landry and his crew are barely able to control or navigate the XM-10 before it leaves the proving grounds and wanders into a combat zone during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Cooper and Landry never directly interact during the film, but the plot shows how the decisions made by Cooper affect Landry's tank.

Cooper, an engineer for a troubled defense contractor, is in charge of designing the "DYP-gyro," a gyroscope for the army's new tank. The company's future hinges on the success of the project. Cooper's gyro fails a crucial test, dooming the company. Downtrodden, Cooper later crosses paths with another engineer named Frank Holtzman (Noonan) who has also designed a DYP-gyro. Holtzman, fearful of what will happen in his meeting with Jeff (Rasche), a deep-cover KGB agent, secretly hides the plans in Cooper's briefcase. After Holtzman is murdered, Cooper discovers the plans. Cooper's co-worker and best friend Steve Loparino (Dzundza) later puts Cooper's name on the plans, and when the "new" gyro works, Cooper is hailed for saving the company.

In 1984, Landry's tank comes under fire from Iraqi jets, leading Landry to plead that he does not belong in this war, shouting "I'm from Cleveland!" at the attacking planes.

Back in 1982, Cooper is contacted by Jeff who tries to obtain the DYP plans. The FBI, knowing that Cooper took credit for somebody else's work, forces him to act as bait for Jeff in a set-up operation. The set-up nearly fails - Jeff is killed during a gun battle, and Cooper himself is shot. Realizing his mortality while being put on an ambulance, Cooper confesses to Clair (Shaver), an attractive co-worker, that he stole the DYP. This triggers an angry response from Clair and also from his wife Laura (Capshaw) who, arriving on the scene, realizes that Cooper has been cheating on her. Surviving the bullet, Cooper receives even worse news from a co-worker: the DYP-gyro he claimed credit for will not work, because it will cause overheating in the WAM, another critical component, crippling the tank's fire control and, in a combat situation, dooming the tank.

The film reaches its climax in a sequence weaving between 1982 when a more conscientious Cooper, having recovered, confronts his employers about the flaws in the DYP, while in 1984, Landry attempts to fire the main gun while under attack by an Iraqi gunship. As had been predicted, the DYP causes failure in the WAM, suggesting that Wylie's protest was ignored.

Instead, the camera cuts to the innards and shows that the DYP has been redesigned according to an idea that Cooper had in 1982 while fixing one of his son's toys. The redesign works, enabling the tank's air defense rockets to launch and destroy the Iraqi gunship. The film ends with Cooper and Landry as heroes in their respective jobs.

Cast

Production

The film did not originally feature Eddie Murphy's character, and was solely a Dudley Moore film. [3] The film's preview screenings were received poorly, and the studio suggested filming a role for Eddie Murphy, who was at the peak of his popularity. Murphy's part was almost completely unconnected from the rest of the film, and his character never even comes into contact with any of the main cast. [3] [4] There had been a scene filmed during the re-shoots which featured Moore and Murphy's characters meeting, but it was cut from the film. Additionally, several other scenes that were important to the original plot were cut in order to fit the newly shot scenes with Murphy into the film, thus contributing to the film's poor reception and reputation as a "meandering mess." [5] [6]

Reception

The movie received negative reviews from critics. On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 29 out of 100, based on eight critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". [7] It opened strong at #2 behind Ghostbusters with $7.8 million but quickly lost steam, mostly due to poor word-of-mouth, and grossed a disappointing $19.2 million. It was nominated for a Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Picture, losing to Dune . [8]

When Murphy hosted Saturday Night Live about five months after the film was released, he admitted in his opening monologue that he knew the film was awful and did it for the money: "After I did 48 Hours and Trading Places , all these scripts started coming from everywhere, and I picked up a script called Best Defense. There’s a movie that sucked real bad! At first, I wasn’t going to do it because I read the script, and I felt like I was an actor at first. But the money they gave me to do Best Defense, y’all would have done Best Defense too, OK? ... I was like, 'What?! How dare you give me a script like this! Oh, that much money? Let’s go!' Best Defense turned out to be the worst movie ever done in the history of anything, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t that hot no more. So, I called up the producer of Saturday Night Live, and I go, 'Um, you still got my dressin’ room?'" [9]

Footage of David Rasche from this film was successfully used as a screen test for his lead role in the 1986 comedy TV series "Sledge Hammer!"

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "Best Defense (1984)". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 2009-10-05.
  2. 1 2 3 Canby, Vincent (July 20, 1984). "Best Defense (1984) A COMEDY ABOUT MUNITIONS". The New York Times .
  3. 1 2 Rabin, Nathan (15 March 2007). "My Year Of Flops Case File # 15: Best Defense". The A.V. Club .
  4. ↑ "Best Defense Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London". Timeout.com. Archived from the original on 2009-08-01. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
  5. ↑ Rabin, Nathan (15 March 2007). "My Year Of Flops Case File # 15: Best Defense". www.AVclub.com. AV Club.
  6. ↑ Canby, Vincent. "Aiming for the zaniness of Catch-22, this comedy misfires". New York Times.
  7. ↑ "Best Defence (1984) reviews". Metacritic . CBS Interactive . Retrieved April 4, 2020.
  8. ↑ "1984 7th Hastings Bad Cinema Society Stinkers Awards". Stinkers Bad Movie Awards . Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on October 17, 2006. Retrieved April 2, 2013.
  9. ↑ "35 Years Ago: Even Eddie Murphy Realizes 'Best Defense' 'Sucked'". 23 July 2019.
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