The Pentagon Wars (1998)

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

First I want to stress how wonderful Kelsy Grammar is as a pompous, self important, dilettante pentagon bureaucrat general, and how a lesser actor would probably been unable to portray a character sharing so many character traits with a character he is best known for (Frazier Crane), while creating a totally distinct individual character without a scene that the other character creeps in a little. Gen. Partridge is a classic privileged twit of the first order, and I never confused him with Frasier for a second. Richard Schiff is equally good as a career officer trying to hold his wits together without jeopardizing his career. He watches his simple, common sense defense department project spiral out of control into one of the most publicized and outrageous examples of the military industrial complex run amok in recent history. What makes this so relevant today is the attitude of "we'll fix the problems in the field" and the casual disregard for life and limb of the troops who face death of injury due to the decisions of those at the highest levels of power. Our current leadership had an agenda to go to war in Iraq from it's outset, but neglected to ramp up military production of armored Hummvees, body armor, etc. in the 2 years from when it took power until the Iraq war started. Whether you support the war or not, this is troubling, especially when you take into account that large portions of our defense budget went to develop a missile defense shield system that shows little progress, does not address the most likely threat we face, but puts billions of dollars into the hands of a company with close association with a secretary of defense who told troops "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." Both sides of this issue can find source for outrage.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, it's quite clever and amusing and keeps a good pace. The disturbing thing is there's usually not some crusader to put the brakes on something like this. The movie really fails to deal with the motivations of the people who so unethically push the project through; they must have some rational for their actions, which could result in untold deaths, but we never hear an explanation. So it's not an in depth analysis, and I'd love to see a documentary on the same subject, but it's quite enjoyable.

i first saw this movie well before coming into the military, and while i found it very entertaining, didn't fully appreciate it. having now been 3 years in, i can very much appreciate the humor of this fantastic satire. granted, there is a fair amount of hyperbole, and no, not everyone in the military is so very inept... but simply put, a few years working with military intellegence elevates my view of this film quite a bit.

The ending scenes are Bill Murray hokey, but the movie is surprisingly compelling. I was vaguely familiar with the facts behind the story, but I intend to read Mr. Burton's book now. The part of Burton's assistant seemed to me to be well played. Grammer's portrayal fit my perception of a Pentagon general, but his aides come out as just caricatures.