Review – Best Defense

Okay, start with the premise that there’s a defense contractor somewhere that’s pressed for cash and laying people off just because the company can’t make a working product. If only implausibility was this movie’s worst problem. Instead – as is typical with Dudley Moore movies – the worst problem here is Dudley Moore. He plays a loathsome little engineer (who was probably supposed to have come across as cute and endearing) whose job is on the line until he steals tank part plans and passes them off as his own designs. Uninteresting intrigue ensues. The high point of the picture are the brief flash-forward scenes in which a hapless tank driver (Eddie Murphy) struggles with the final product. Even there, racism makes it a little hard to enjoy the comedy (not to mention that the notion of Iraq invading Kuwait several years before it actually happened seems a little eerie in retrospect). See if desperate