Best Defense
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| Best Defense | |
|---|---|
 The DVD cover for Best Defense. |
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| Directed by | Willard Huyck |
| Produced by | Gloria Katz |
| Written by | Robert Grossbach (novel Easy and Hard Ways Out) Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz (screenplay) |
| Starring | Dudley Moore, Eddie Murphy Kate Capshaw George Dzundza Helen Shaver Mark Arnott Peter Michael Goetz Tom Noonan David Rasche |
| Music by | Patrick Williams |
| Cinematography | Donald Peterman |
| Editing by | Sidney Wolinsky |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 20, 1984 (USA) |
| Running time | 94 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | Unknown |
| IMDb profile | |
Best Defense is a comedy starring Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy. It was released in 1984 by Paramount Pictures.
It was judged to be so bad that the studio re-worked it and created a part for Eddie Murphy who was at the peak of his popularity. Murphy's part was almost unconnected with the rest of the film and his character almost never came into contact with the main cast (the parallel plots that were the film's weakness are discussed below). Murphy would later joke about taking that role when he hosted Saturday Night Live that his reaction to being offered the role was "This script sucks, man! Oh, THAT much money? Let's go!"
It was also the second programme shown on Westcountry Television.
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[edit] Plot
The movie takes place as two parallel plots separated by several years: Moore is an engineer developing a targeting system on a tank for the United States Army and Murphy is an American tank commander who finds himself forced to use the vehicle years later when Iraq invades Kuwait (an unintentional foreshadowing of the Gulf War that occurred seven years after the release of the film).
The protagonists never interact in any way throughout the film. However a cut scene showed both Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy together, but was edited out from the final film.
The film progresses as the indifferent and incompetent Moore slowly becomes more and more conscientious as he sees his corrupt employer falsifying test results on the notoriously unreliable system. This is interwoven with clips of the reluctant Murphy being forced into combat with a pair of ill trained Kuwaiti crewmen and the lemon of a tank (the machine gun falls apart in Murphy's hands, etc).
The film reaches its climax when Murphy attempts to fire the main gun, which jams due to an overheated component ("The WAM's overheating! The WAM's overheating! What the Hell is a WAM!?!"). Flashbacks then show the reformed Moore ignoring his bosses' orders to cut costs and making a sound engineering change to fix an anticipated overheating problem in the component ("Damn it, something on this tank is going to work!"). The camera cuts away to the tank's innards, showing Moore's fan turning on and cooling the component, and the AA rockets getting launched to save Murphy from an Iraqi anti-tank helicopter. The film ends with Moore and Murphy as heroes in their respective jobs.
[edit] Trivia
In a scene while waiting for Moore in the car, Kate Capshaw hums the famous tune to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a reference to her role for the movie also released in 1984.
Six years after the film was released, Iraq would actually invade Kuwait, sparking the First Gulf War. The "XM-Annihilator tanks" used in the movie are actually M1A1 Abrams tanks, which would also see action in the war.
Eddie Murphy was credited as "Special Guest Star".
[edit] References
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