Le coup du siècle

"Deal Of The Century" was director William Friedkin's attempt to create a "black comedy" satirizing the armaments industry, in much the same way as Stanley Kubrick satirized the nuclear balance of power in "Dr. Strangelove." Unfortunately, it falls short of that ambitious goal.

The movie concerns an arms dealer, Eddie Muntz (Chevy Chase), who gets an opportunity to take over the sale of an ultra-advanced pilotless combat aircraft to a dumb South American dictator when the original salesperson dies unexpectedly.

Friedkin clearly thought he was making a great movie here, in the way he diligently employed many of the same elements as "Strangelove": verisimilitude in the names of arms companies and weapon systems, blatant phallic symbolism, sex-obsessed characters, sight gags, and a basically bizarre, unreal plot.

Unfortunately, all Friedkin ends up doing is showing that he is no Kubrick (at least not after "The French Connection" anyway), Chevy Chase is no Peter Sellers, and in general those associated with this movie just aren't in the same league as those who made "Strangelove." Many of the lines and sight gags just aren't that funny, and the satirical point about the armaments industry gets lost in a meandering plot with an irrelevant subplot about Muntz' romance with the dead salesman's widow (Sigourney Weaver). An actual romance tended to dilute the satirical effectiveness of the sexual obsessions of the major characters.