Review: Behind Enemy Lines

Next to Warner Brothers, which bought the rights to the first Harry Potter book for peanuts, 20th Century Fox is the luckiest studio around. Behind Enemy Lines -- a tight, highly entertaining and patriotic war thriller about soldiers heading into harm's way -- couldn't possibly be more timely. The aerial and ground combat special affects are so realistic they nearly constitute a breakthrough. The two major actors -- Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson -- are terrific, balancing and complimenting one another. The action is fast-paced and non-stop. Wilson really comes into his own in this is a disciplined, old-style Hollywood war yarn. And only a crisp 90 minutes long! SPOILAGE WARNING: plot is discussed, not ending.

The plot centers on an aircraft carrier patrolling near the end of the savage conflict in Bosnia. The ship is run by Americans but under the command of NATO, a setup for the murky global politics that underscore the plot. Lt. Chris Burnett (Wilson) is sick of the routines of non-combat flying and is considered a spoiled hotdog by his weary Admiral Riegart (Hackman). A wise-cracking smartass, he's sent on an aerial reconnaissance mission on Christmas Day. Ever looking to push the envelope (shades of Tom Cruise in Top Gun ), he veers off course and takes pictures of things he's not supposed to see -- civilians being slaughtered. His plane is shot down in a whiz-bang, special-affects laden sequence, his co-pilot and best buddy murdered as he looks on helplessly.

From the first shot, Director John Moore knows exactly what he's doing. The movie has an authentic, gung-ho quality too it, and it's eerily prescient -- the spy satellite and thermal imaging stuff is right out of today's evening newscasts. The Bosnian war and background scenes are authentic and disturbing. The movie moves like a rocket, pushed along by jump cuts, aerial shots and changes in film speed and angles. It doesn't get cluttered up with the usual distractions (remember Pearl Harbor's belabored love interests and other digressions?). And it actually ends right where it should, a minor cinematic miracle these days! Wilson convincingly evolves from an irresponsible snot-nose into a resourceful warrior, pursued by cool, murderous Bosnian soldiers who want to get the film of a massacre he shot from his onboard digital camera. Riegert is snarled in bureaucracy, his efforts to save the pilot complicated by a weak-kneed U.S. government and NATO wussies worried about global politics and diplomatic concerns.

As the onboard Marines restlessly lobby to fire up their Apaches and go in and get him, Wilson dodges and battles the Bosnian army all over the European forests (the movie was shot in Eastern Europe). The ending is pure John Wayne. This is a first-rate war thriller under any circumstances, but given the particular ones raging in Afghanistan, it's going to be a blockbuster.

Re:It appears they did their homework.

[lelitsch]

Actually, the only thing that got me ticked off was the scene where he runs through the alley with all the mines going off behind him. As a former assault engineer I can't believe that even the dumbest Serb conscript would put the detonators and trip wires outside the blast radius. Not once, but about 20 times in a row.

Special Affects?

[Anonymous Coward]

$ dict affect
4 definitions found

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:

Affect \Af*fect"\ ([a^]f*f[e^]kt"), v. t. [imp. & p. p.
{Affected}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Affecting}.] [L. affectus, p. p.
of afficere to affect by active agency; ad + facere to make:
cf. F. affectere, L. affectare, freq. of afficere. See
{Fact}.]
1. To act upon; to produce an effect or change upon.

2. To influence or move, as the feelings or passions; to
touch.

DUH!

Seriously, why is this IDIOT posting movie reviews? Like this is really news for nerds... Or stuff that matters!

Re:A Good Review??

[Bartacus]

Maybe you're referring to the Roger Ebert [suntimes.com] review?

The premiere of "Behind Enemy Lines" was held aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. I wonder if it played as a comedy. Its hero is so reckless and its villains so incompetent that it's a showdown between a man begging to be shot, and an enemy that can't hit the side of a Bos-nian barn.

This is not the story of a fugitive trying to sneak through enemy terrain and be rescued, but of a movie character magically transported from one photo opportunity to another.

Owen Wilson stars as Burnett, a hot-shot Navy flier who "signed up to be a fighter pilot--not a cop on a beat no one cares about." On a recon mission over Bosnia, he and his partner Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht) venture off mission and get digital photos of a mass grave and illegal troop movements. It's a Serbian operation in violation of a fresh peace treaty, and the Serbs fire two missiles to bring the plane down.

The plane's attempts to elude the missiles supply the movie's high point. The pilots eject. Stackhouse is found by Tracker (Vladimir Mashkov), who tells his commander Lokar (Olek Krupa) to forget about a big pursuit and simply allow him to track Burnett. That sets up the cat-and-mouse game in which Burnett wanders through open fields, stands on the tops of ridges and stupidly makes himself a target, while Tracker is caught in one of those nightmares where he runs and runs but just can't seem to catch up.

Back on the USS Vinson, Admiral Reigart (Gene Hackman) is biting his lower lip. He wants to fly in and rescue Burnett, but is blocked by his NATO superior, Admiral Piquet (Joaquim de Almeida)--a Frenchman who is so devious he substitutes French NATO troops for Americans in a phony rescue mission, and calls them off just when Burnett is desperately waving from a pickup area. Bet you a shiny new dime that when this movie plays in France, Admiral Piquet becomes an Italian.

The first-time director is John Moore, who has made lots of TV commercials, something we intuit in a scene where Reigart orders Burnett to proceed to another pick-up area, and Burnett visualizes fast-motion whooshing tracking shots up and down mountains and through valleys before deciding, uh-uh, he ain't gonna do that.

What Burnett does do is stroll through Bosnia like a bird watcher, exposing himself in open areas and making himself a silhouette against the skyline. He's only spotted in the first place because when his buddy is cornered, he's hiding safely but utters a loud involuntary yell and then starts to run up an exposed hillside. First rule of not getting caught: No loud involuntary yells within the hearing of the enemy.

This guy is a piece of work. Consider the scene where Burnett substitutes uniforms with a Serbian fighter. He even wears a black ski mask covering his entire face. He walks past a truck of enemy troops, and then what does he do? Why, he removes the ski mask, revealing his distinctive blond hair, and then he turns back toward the truck so we can see his face, in case we didn't know who he was. How did this guy get through combat training? Must have been a social promotion to keep him with his age group.

At times Burnett is pursued by the entire Serbian army, which fires at him with machine guns, rifles and tanks, of course never hitting him. The movie recycles the old howler where hundreds of rounds of ammo miss the hero, but all he has to do is aim and fire, and--pow! another bad guy jerks back, dead. I smiled during the scene where Admiral Reigart is able to use heat-sensitive satellite imagery to look at high-res silhouettes of Burnett stretched out within feet of the enemy. Maybe this is possible. What I do not believe is that the enemies in this scene could not spot the American uniform in a pile of enemy corpses.

Do I need to tell you that the ending involves a montage of rueful grins, broad smiles, and meaningful little victorious nods, scored with upbeat rock music? No, probably not.

And of course we get shots of the characters and are told what happened to them after the story was over--as if this is based on real events. It may have been inspired by the adventures of Air Force pilot Scott O'Grady, who was rescued after being shot down over Bosnia in 1995, but based on real life, it's not.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

gung-ho?

[pvera]

"The movie has an authentic, gung-ho quality too it"

Katz, do you even know what the hell gung-ho really means? Gung-ho means "striving for harmony" which is what pretty much the core leadership model for the USMC Raider Battalions (which started as an experiment on chinese comunist guerrilla operations).

Katz was probably referring to the bastardized version of "gung ho" made popular by the propaganda movies of the period.

As for the movie itself, it rocked. Loud as hell and well worth it. The politics of the movie were disturbing, which added to the overall theme.

One thing that did not make any sense was when Gene Hackman called the aircraft carrier a "boat." In the navy a surface vessel is a "ship," while a "boat" is a submarine (not that it matters, since to a submariner, anything on the surface is classified as a target, hostile or not). Notice that our submarines are built at a place called the Electric Boat Company (General Dynamics, http://www.gdeb.com/) while our surface vessels are built in shipyards (like for example Grumman's Newport News shipyard, http://www.nns.com/).

Still, it rocked. It definitely rocked. I think Behind Enemy Lines took the title from Top Gun for the aerial sequences.

Has anyone seen it?

[90XDoubleSide]

I would be interested in knowing if anyone who has seen the movie actually agrees that it is worth seeing. While I don't like to avoid seeing a flick just because of someone's bad review, when I go onto it's Rotten Tomatoes page [rottentomatoes.com] and see:

"If you're looking for anything beyond flashy entertainment, Behind Enemy Lines feels out of whack from the start."
-- Stephanie Zacharek, SALON.COM

"The exhausting obsession with gizmos and gotchas only accentuates a baffling disinterest in the story's emotional crux."
-- Jessica Winter, VILLAGE VOICE

"The Bosnian War becomes a video game, Gene Hackman turns into a pseudo-John Wayne, and Owen Wilson and Vladimir Mashkov impersonate The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote."
-- Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Pro forma stuff, so much so that you start to wonder why no fetching femme resistance fighter materializes to help the Americans on the ground."
-- Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"An implausible military technology adventure that takes about 10 minutes to get started, then climaxes for an hour-and-a-half."
-- Paul Tatara, CNN

as the top five reviews I have to wonder. Couple that with the fact that Film Threat [filmthreat.com] (with whom I agree about 90% of the time) gave it one star, and the sleaziness factor from knowing they moved the release date up to cash in on the September 11th bombing and I think I will be taking this review with more than a grain of salt :)

what are you talking about the movie sucked --

[mix_master_mike]

I saw the movie on Friday and can honestly say it was not worth the $6 admission. Here are some of the reasons why (please note I'm not a modern war historian or what-not and could be totally wrong on some issues): -at the very end our hero main character is in the crossfire of 3 fully equipped apache helicopters firing all they got at the other side; where we see some 50 soldiers equipped neatly with ak-47s, 3 someodd tanks all firing, snipers galore; and he doesn't even get scratched. You can sum this up in one word: stupid. As he slides in to get the disk with the pictures on it he also nicely takes out some of the snipers with his handgun; stupid how he can take out some people with automatics and he doesnt get touched in the crossfire. -when the two ugly guys that are searching for the american are in the field where he was going to get rescued from they find his old clip; did you see how large that field was? What are the odds of you finding the one and only used clip from the american? -after the assisaniation of the pilot the navigator yells from the hills and they then realize there is another and fire upon the hills; once again our hero is not scaved as we see thousands of rounds narrowly miss him; once again totally unrealistic. -as our hero slides down the old dam or whatever it was the sniper convieniently misses him by inches each time; however the first shot missed to by the same distance; they are trying to tell us this slavic sniper can shoot and miss a moving target just as good as he can shoot and miss a non-mobile target... horrible... -driving to hac isn't it so perfect for the kid on the truck to have an ice cold (presumably) coca-cola? these are just a few of the stupid things about this movie. So the graphics were great... there was one part where the landmines blew up some of the enemies in slow motion and you saw their bodies bend and whatnot... very cool. But if you were planning to see this movie you may as well wait and get it cheaper at the video store. These are my comments not yours - please don't flame :)

Re:gung-ho?

[jasonzzz]

Gung Ho means "Ultimate Excellence" or "Ever Better". Obviously Evan Carlson (of Carlson's Raiders = 2nd Raider Battalion) bastardized the word (don't worry, most Foreigners bastardize words and make it to man whatever they want: Capt Cook did it with the Hawaiians, so did the missionaries all over the world. Even the Japanese bastardize English all over the place, Note: Check out http://www.engrish.com )and the concept when he had his tour with the Communist Chinese during the Japanese occupation of China.

Note that Carlson "learned" the concept during his working relationship together with the Chinese Army, so it was an "experience", not an "experiment".

"Striving for Harmony" is something that Carlson and the American made up. Don't confuse that with the true spirit of the word.

(SPOILER ALERT) Re:Realistic

[jallen02]

I too was kind of shocked by some of the movies unrealistic scenes. Ok, flying off course a major mistake in and off itself is the premise for the movie and it is believable. I knew that was not realistic but it was belivable so the movie was still good.

Owen wilson did a good job in this role actually.

The scene with the SAM launched missiles and them evading and then ejecting were really awesome. I mean I have seen a ton of those scenes before but that missile chase scene was very engrossing and some of the footage for those scenes was plain awesome.

Once they hit the ground the movie starts getting a little silly. They know they are in hostile territory and he leaves his man laying injured in the middle of a wide open field.... NOT! At least if he would have dragged him to some woods and hid him and THEN the enemy army found him it would have seemed better, but that was a dumb movie mistake. The scene where they shot the pilot made me jump even though I knew it was coming.. it was well done.. just not realisitc.

Next You have owen wilson dodging an impossible number of bulletsand explosive tank rounds....... It was a good chase scene one of them would have been okay.

Then you have owen wilson sitting on some sort of broken stone structure. The main pursuer with the nice sniper rifle misses his target that has been sitting still for at least 5 minutes. In the real world if he was sitting in the open for so long that sniper would not have missed, end of the movie.

The pursuit continues and wilson manages to survive in what seemed to be the epicenter of a bunch of mines of some sort (I don;t know the military terminology for waht they were). ANyways it was not realistic after they showed what it did to the enemy soliders.

everything else in the movie is pretty good until the last scene. That last scene had me wishing it didnt happen.

They fly in with a few marine helicopters. There are a ton of enemy tanks and soliders all approaching owen wilson. Then these helicopters pop up, stay in the same place and somehow decimate the enemy for like four minutes. The footage was nice, but I just DONT see how the enemy solders can be such a bad shot that they could not hit these practicaly stationary helicopters for a full four minutes. Oh and whats with the enemy commander sitting there in plain view prancing about yelling in anger and never getting hit while everyone around him dies?

Oh and they happened to see the supa camo'd enemy sniper and shoot him a few moments before he fired?????

That last scene was bad :(

Overall the movie was great and the footage and way it was filmed were very nice. The camera angles were good (except those damn shaking camera scenes, won't those Private Ryan Esque scenes ever stop??? )

I am a little critical of a few scenes since I know a good deal about military procedure because I have a couple friends in special forces in the army.

Overall.. the movie was fun and they didnt truly spoil it until the end so I thought it was an alright movie.

Jeremy

Filthy Critic

[ink]

And for those of us who disagree with Katz' movie takes most of the time, it's refreshing to note that the Filthy Critic gave it only 2 fingers:

http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/ [bigempire.com]

Re:SAM Missles

[BigBir3d]

That is only true for stand alone style missiles, and even those will scan for a target until they run ouf of fuel. It also dependent on the tracking mechanism, is it thermal, radar etc.

Newer equipment communicates with the launcher to give updates on co-ordinates as it goes in, as well as after you "dodge" it...

Basing reality on a computer game is not such a good idea. Especially in a technology based arena.

Re:Realistic

[Not The Real Me]

As ex-military myself, I tend to agree with you about not leaving your dead behind. Even in Vietnam, the U.S. only left its dead behind when the body couldn't be found or extraction was impossible (since the nights belonged to Charlie, ARVN were almost useless, both civilians and VC wore black pajamas, and Westmoreland and the politicians in D.C. were determined not to win). The U.S. routinely left the dead behind in WWII and Korea. The numbers of U.S. MIA in Korea and WWII are staggering compared to Vietnam. As far as the movie is concerned, it's pure Hollywood. U.S. pilots *DO NOT* change their mission on a whim. It's career suicide if a pilot loses his ship because of negligence or "winging it". Officers in the military pretty much toe the line when it comes to D.C. politics. The only time I ever heard an officer sound even remotely rebellious was when they were drunk and out of earshot of other officers. So, a guy in the military frustrated by bureaucracy or politics?! Sounds more like an NCO, ground pounder or grunt, not a pilot.

Re:(SPOILER ALERT) Re:Realistic

[nathanm]

The scene with the SAM launched missiles and them evading and then ejecting were really awesome. I mean I have seen a ton of those scenes before but that missile chase scene was very engrossing and some of the footage for those scenes was plain awesome.

Unfortunately, the SAM chase scene is the worst, most unrealistic part of the whole movie.

They shot at them with an SA-8. This is a solid rocket fueled, radar guided missile.

SAMs are not as maneuverable as the aircraft they pursue, but just about every SAM (& air-to-air missile for that matter) flies Mach 3+. Also, if the missile doesn't get close enough to the aircraft to explode before the fuel is spent, it just goes ballistic & hits the ground. Missiles have a proximity fuse that detonates within a certain range of the aircraft. The warheads are actually very small, but the hope is that the shrapnel will impact the aircraft & hit vital components like hydraulic lines, electrical cables, or fuel tanks.

Here are the standard tactics for evading a SAM:

Immediately drop chaff & flares (because you usually won't know if it's radar or IR guided) and continue to drop them every so often until the missile's gone.

Next, & most importantly, visually acquire the missile and don't take your eyes off it.

Then, turn into it so you're flying head on. This reduces your radar cross section & puts your largest heat source (i.e. engines) behind you & away from an IR guided SAMs seeker head.

Finally, if the missile isn't diverted by the chaff or flares, break violently a few seconds before expected impact.