About this story
The plot consists of a chase of a hijacked MBT-99A tank, designed by the United States Air Force (which is odd, but will become the saviour of Eleanor, as she can be ejected before the tank explodes, like a fighter jet). The audience is expected to be enamored with this vehicle. At one scene when it looks like the tank is sure to get away, the background music turns into cocktail-lounge jazz and sparkly lights swirl around the tank. The tank carries six ATGM launchers (which Ken is somehow able to dislodge with minimal trouble, along with a piece of the turret, towards the end of the movie), three to each side of the turret, and a laser-based machine-gun-esque installment, in addition to its rifled main gun. The tank's treads are dual-mounted (the tread is split in half, making four sets of treads for the tank). The employment of the laser, however, seems counter-productive to a machine-gun's mission, as it can only fire once every few seconds. If it can fire at higher rates, it does not do so, and tries to acquire a lock on its pursuer (Blader, in this case). This suggests a low ammunition capacity, unlike thousand-round-and-up machine-guns routinely mounted on modern tanks. It does not appear to have any effect on the road, either, which does not say much about its power. Another tank involved is the MBT-90D, which are dispatched by the Army (or Air Force—the movie never makes it clear if it is a joint effort, although the general who arrives midway into the movie is shown riding in something resembling an ADATS) to take out the tank. Despite having at least a platoon of these, the MBT-99 still evades capture. The M-90Ds are armed with a three-barreled autocannon, the calibre of which may be around fifteen to twenty millimeters. The MBT-90D is equipped with three ATGM missile launchers, on the left side of the turret, and its main cannon is mounted on the front, instead of on a turret. After the MBT-99's hijackers (who appear inside the tank after getting away from a recently-committed bank robbery), hired by a shadowy group, backed by a foreign nation seeking an edge in their military (the M-99 is presumably on its way to be tested at a separate base), are forced out by Ken and his team, Eleanor enters to study the tank, and it starts up on its own, having been programmed by the hijackers to head for a pier and drive off its end so as to rendezvous with an enemy submarine. The rest of the movie is made up of the chase through the city, resulting in the destruction of another bank (owned by the same corporation that built the first bank in the movie), and various collateral damage.
