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Review: Behind Enemy Lines
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.
"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.
Pedro
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The Insomniac Coder
"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 (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 :)
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
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