EDITOR’S NOTE: Deal of the Century was on the CBS Late Movie on January 20 and June 16, 1989.
Eddie Muntz (Chevy Chase) is selling rifles, mines and cassette-tape-player guns to small countries for a major weapons company. He gets shot in the foot — that’s what happens when you sell to both sides — and is disillusioned when he meets Harold DeVoto (Wallace Shawn), who works for Luckup, selling unmanned drones. Yes, all the way back in 1983.
The stress of military weapons peddling leads Harold to take his own life, leading his wife, Catherine (Sigourney Weaver), to angrily shoot Muntz — again — in the foot. The whole deal falls apart when a UAV called the Peacemaker fails, leading Muntz, Catherine and Ray Kasternak (Gregory Hines) to work together to sell to the country of San Miguel. Except, well, Ray is having a religious experience, Muntz is burned out, and the weapons don’t seem to work.
Directed by William Friedkin and written by Paul Brickman, this movie just never seems to gel. Maybe it’s my dislike of Chase, a fact that I would have never believed as a kid. What ends up is just painful: a movie that seems to want to say something but has no idea how.
While this would play on the CBS Late Movie, the network pulled the 1986 TV debut as it was in the middle of the Iran-Contra issue.
You can watch this on Tubi.
