Best Defense

Sometime George Lucas associates Huyck and Katz had disastrous previews with their 'comedy' about engineer Dud's bumbling attempts to perfect the crucial on-board gyroscope for the new XM-10 Annihilator tank. So it was off for reshoots, drafting in 'strategic guest star' Murphy (it says so on the opening titles) as a US army tank commander putting said vehicle through its slapstick paces on test manoeuvres. Cutting back and forth between the two points, the film's a dismally unfunny shambles in which the leads never meet, enlivened only by a baleful cameo from hardware designer Tom Noonan, and the jaw-dropping plot development that has Iraq invading Kuwait, six years before Saddam did it for real. Never thought you'd get to hear Eddie Murphy say 'I love Iraq!'? Well, he does here, feigning cowardice to bamboozle enemy firepower.