Over the past decade or so, HBO has developed a reputation for making original movies about touchy subjects most major networks avoid. But while the network has made a number of worthwhile films about such commercially risky topics as the late Roy Cohn (Citizen Cohn), the takeover of RJR Nabisco (Barbarians At The Gate), and the development of the silicone breast implant (Breast Men), HBO's original films all seem to have the same flat, homogenized look and feel. The Pentagon Wars, for better or worse, is pretty much a standard HBO movie—diverting and entertaining, but also broad and simplistic in a way that never really lets you forget that you're watching a TV movie. The film tells the story of the development of the Bradley Fighting Machine, a combat vehicle conceived in the late '60s. Fifteen years and $14 billion later, it had morphed into a clunky, useless death trap. The film's hero is Cary Elwes, an ambitious young Air Force officer assigned to test the machine; he clashes with a complacent general (Kelsey Grammer) intent on railroading the project into production. Set during the mid-'80s, The Pentagon Wars does a nice job showing how the self-serving dynamics of the military can lead to almost surreally wasteful projects. But while The Pentagon Wars is intermittently funny and always interesting, it's not nearly as sharp as it could be. Actor/director Richard Benjamin (Made In America, Mermaids) directs the film as if it were the Down Periscope sequel the film's packaging makes it look like. It's much better than that, though, and Grammer is quite good as Elwes' pompous superior. Elwes is, as always, monumentally bland, but the story the film tells is so inherently compelling that it transcends the blandness of its execution.