Synopsis
The story follows a pursuit of a stolen MBT-99A tank, a vehicle designed by the United States Air Force (an unusual choice that later proves crucial, as Eleanor can eject from it like a fighter pilot before it explodes). The film expects the audience to be charmed by this tank. At one point, when the tank appears ready to escape, the background music shifts to cocktail-lounge jazz and sparkly lights swirl around the vehicle. The tank is equipped with six ATGM launchers (three on each side of the turret, which Ken manages to dislodge with relative ease near the film's end, along with a chunk of the turret itself), a laser-based machine-gun-like weapon, and its standard rifled main gun. The tank's treads are dual-mounted, splitting into four separate track sets. The laser weapon, however, seems ill-suited for a machine gun's role, as it can only fire once every few seconds. It does not demonstrate a higher rate of fire, instead attempting to lock onto its pursuer (Blader in this case). This suggests limited ammunition, unlike the thousands of rounds typical of modern tank machine guns. It also appears to have no effect on the road surface, raising questions about its power. Another tank model, the MBT-90D, is deployed by the Army or Air Force—the film never clarifies if it is a joint operation, though the general who arrives midway is shown riding in a vehicle resembling an ADATS—to neutralize the stolen tank. Despite having at least a platoon of these, the MBT-99 still avoids capture. The M-90Ds are armed with a three-barreled autocannon, likely around 15 to 20 millimeters in caliber, and carry three ATGM missile launchers on the left side of the turret. Their main cannon is mounted on the front rather than on a turret. After the MBT-99's hijackers (who appear inside the tank following a recent bank robbery) are forced out by Ken and his team, Eleanor enters to study the tank, and it starts up on its own. The hijackers had programmed it to head toward a pier and drive off the end to rendezvous with an enemy submarine, backed by a shadowy group funded by a foreign nation seeking a military advantage—the M-99 was presumably en route to a separate base for testing. The remainder of the movie consists of the chase through the city, resulting in the destruction of another bank (owned by the same corporation that built the first) and various collateral damage.