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Behind Enemy Lines ***

Bravo niner delta, what's your vector, Victor?

You'll hear lots of dialogue like that in Behind Enemy Lines. Military code talk is one of the coolest things ever. Vector, copy, come back, affirmative, negative, no-go, R(ally)P(oint)... That stuff is just plain COOL.

Back to the movie review. So – you're making a war movie with airplanes. Let's make sure you have everything you need. Stock footage? Check. Lieutenant with a ‘bad boy' attitude? Check. Stuff blowing up? Check. Politically ambiguous military situation? Che – what? That doesn't make sense. I mean, we're America... (Don't worry – We're the good guys. It's all the rest that's ambiguous.)

See, Behind Enemy Lines is set in Bosnia during the ‘last' days of the civil war in Serbia/Yugoslavia/Bosnia-Herzegovina. Chris Burnett (Wilson) is stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic Sea. The ship is commanded by Admiral Leslie Reigart (Hackman), who in turn is under the command of NATO, represented by Admiral Piquet (de Almeida). Now, Burnett is a bit of a maverick. Not like the Tom Cruise type – Burnett is tired of being in the Navy. He signed on to be a fighter pilot, not a sitting around on the ship pilot. In fact, he's handed in his resignation papers. Of course, you can't just leave in the middle of a mission. When the ship returns to port, Burnett is done. Reigart doesn't really care for Burnett – he used to have potential, but now he's just dead weight. So, in a bit of vindictiveness, Reigart assigns Burnett (a navigator) and his pilot, Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht), on a recon mission on Christmas. The recon? A lake. Lovely. But, radar picks up some activity. Activity OFF OF THE ASSIGNED COURSE. Now, we've established that Burnett is a maverick, so, naturally they do recon over there. They take pictures of mass graves. Then, they get shot down. BEHIND ENEMY LINES. This is not good. See, NATO planes were not supposed to be making fly-bys in that area. A peace treaty has just been signed, and things could fall apart at any moment. So, Reigart has a choice to make – does he risk the lives of thousands of people to get one man? Does he ensure peace and leave a man behind? We all know the answer to that.

Behind Enemy Lines is slick. It is very, very slick. Teflon. It looks like a video game. A really cool video game. Shifty frame-rates, cool filters, Matrix-style special effects, Saving Private Ryan-camera-effects, it looks way cool. It's not universally realistic, but, stylistically it works very well.

The acting is also good. No one is going to win any acting awards in this picture, but, no one stinks. If you don't know who Gene Hackman is, turn off your computer right now. You have some serious catching up to do. If you don't know who Owen Wilson is, start paying attention. This guy is good. Very, very good. You may have seen him in Zoolander (he was the blonde model). You may have seen him in Shanghai Noon with Jackie Chan. You may have seen an underrated comedy called Rushmore – he co-wrote that. He's just beginning to get recognition, and he deserves it. While I think he's better in comedies, he's no slouch as a leading-man-action-hero. Joaquim de Almeida doesn't stand out, but you've seen him before. (He played Bucho (the bad guy) in Desperado)

So, that leaves us with the story. It must be tough to make a war movie now. WWII was easy – the bad guys were easy to spot. But, to make a movie based on any war post-1970 must be tricky. Things like finding ‘bad guys' aren't easy anymore. Even in something like the Gulf War. To paraphrase Mark Wahlberg from Three Kings: `I forget... Are we shooting people anymore?' The Balkan conflict was really, really tricky. First of all, there were three sides. Secondly, there was a huge history of racial strife in the area. Thirdly, NATO stepped in to prevent the war from spreading into Macedonia, which would have brought Greece (a NATO member) and Turkey (another NATO member) into the war against each other. Fourthly, keeping all the factions straight was very, very hard unless you studied political science. Behind Enemy Lines doesn't get too bogged down in the details, which is good. Nor does it name real names. Slobodan Milosovic is not mentioned, but he is implied. The story is about an American airman in the middle of the conflict, but it's not based on the story of Lt. Scott O'Grady.

What we have here is a slick, mostly non-political (there are some references to landmines being bad for children and other living things) war movie. It's not perfectly paced, but it's close. The cinematography is really, really cool. And stuff blows up.

F-18 Fighter navigator Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson) is tired of boring meaningless flying over the Balkins. On a routine Christmas mission, he gets stuck on a recon mission. They go off course to scout a target, but get shot down. The Serbs find the pilot and executes him. Chris goes on the run alone against massive forces. Meanwhile Admiral Leslie McMahon Reigart (Gene Hackman) in command of the carrier sets out to rescue the down pilot despite orders not to.

There are many things going wrong with this movie. First there is no way any command would not go to Hell to rescue a down pilot. A bit of diplomacy is not going to stop any American command. The only possible excuse is logistics, and an aircraft carrier has all the logistic they need.

Then there is the standard bad guys can't shot straight. Owen Wilson is bullet proof. They are blowing up the entire country and yet they keep missing the guy. It gets ridiculous after awhile.

This is a blow em up action thriller disguised as a realistic military movie. If you forget any pretense of real danger, this is a good fun time having things explode.

Sure, this movie is unrealistic, slightly jingoistic, and not exactly Dr. Zhivago when it comes to a deep plot, but it's fun to watch. I'm a serious student of the military studies in a professional sense, and I fully realize that the technology (especially the missile chase) and doctrines are unrealistic, but I am also capable of suspending my critical eye when I just want to sit back and enjoy an action flick. I'll save the brain power for something that actually matters, not for a movie, which is just another form of escaping from real life for an hour or two. So yeah, this movie gets a thumbs up for a fun film to sit back and enjoy the surround sound and big screen TV while chomping on some popcorn and a Coke.

Don't a movie seriously that isn't supposed to be taken so seriously!

"Behind Enemy Lines" is a film with a bit of controversy. The story clearly was based on the experiences of US Air Force pilot Scott O'Grady...but they took great liberties with the facts and O'Grady felt he was maligned by the movie because the lead (Owen Wilson) had a lousy attitude at the beginning of the film and was insubordinate...unlike the real life O'Grady. The film also changes a lot of the facts--making the plane a two-seat Navy plane (an F-18 Super Eagle) flown from an aircraft carrier instead of the single seat F-16 O'Grady flew from an air base. Regardless, the film still is quite exciting and worth seeing.

The story begins on a US aircraft carrier. Lt. Burnett (Wilson) is annoyed flying during the 1995 cease fire over what was Yugoslavia, as they are simply flying reconnaissance missions...and avoiding combat with the Bosnians. After submitting his request for discharge from the Navy, the Admiral (Gene Hackman) chews Burnett out and assigns him extra duty...in this case, a recon mission on Christmas.

Unfortunately, the two-seat plane is shot down by Serbs...a violation of the cease fire. After both the pilot and navigator eject, the Serbs execute the pilot...and the navigator, Burnett, manages to escape and the rest of the film concerns the Serbs trying to kill Burnett because of the information he's gained from the mission about troop movements and genocide. To avoid death, Burnett runs many miles over hostile territory to safety.

As I watched the film, it became clear that the film was intended thrill audiences at the expense of common sense....especially at the end of the picture. Seeing the Admiral flying a helicopter on the rescue mission seemed pretty dopey and the US Navy would never risk a command officer on such a mission. There also were some stunts at the end which were pretty dim as well. Exciting? Yes....but at the expense of realism. In reality, helicopters AND Marine fighter planes were involved in the mission (the film onlys showed helicopters, which seemed silly flying into such hostile territory when they DID have an aircraft carrier filled with planes!).

Oh, and while it's not terribly important, the film takes place over Christmas and O'Grady's plane was actually shot down around June.

Overall, a fun film to watch but do NOT take it to be a history lesson.

Note this is not a war movie. Instead it is a survival story set during a war. Viewed in that sense, it is an incredible action-packed drama. The photography is insanely good, with some fantastic aerial shots. Hail to director John Moore for having such a clear vision of what he wanted the end product to look like. This was so incredible, it is hard to believe it was his directorial debut feature.

Owen Wilson does a styling job here, so much so that I can't understand why he does comedy more often than drama. He just does drama so well. The film has amazing visuals, fast paced action, great acting, great music, great effects, great suspense - what else could one ask for to be entertained? This was a thrill-ride from beginning to end, with never a dull moment. It just got better and better as it progressed - and what an ending!