Behind Enemy Lines Review
By Roburado
"Line" up for something else
Owen Wilson stars opposite Gene Hackman in this pointless exercise in CGI and pyrotechnics. In Behind Enemy Lines Wilson plays the maverick/iconoclastic Lt. Chris Burnett, a "RIO" in the backseat of a F-18E/F Super Hornet, which gets shot down over Bosnia. Gene Hackman nearly reprises his role from Crimson Tide as the hard-ass commanding officer. This movie is the story of Burnett's trying to survive behind enemy lines while his commanding officer navigates the labyrinthine intricacies of politics in the Balkans in an effort to bring his "boy" back home.
I'm prompted to write this review, because I have so many criticisms of this movie. It was akin to watching a science fiction story; I had to suspend my disbelief so many times. Personally, I just can't buy that the Burnett character is even in the military. Why? Well, he keeps putting himself in unnecessary jeopardy. He ought to have had better survival skills than he showed. Hackman's character has a really appropriate line, "…use your training." The Navy and the Air Force send their airmen to SERE school to learn how to survive, evade, resist, and escape. I think Burnett must not have been taking notes. First of all, he searches for his pilot by yelling out his name as if no one is after them. What?!? Did he just miss the whole last five minutes of the movie in which someone shot down his CGI F-18? His pilot is just as bad. They come to a ridiculous consensus that it's a good idea to have the injured pilot lie there in the middle of an open field next to a brightly colored parachute, which seems to say, "Hey!!! Look!!! The pilot is here!!! Come kill him!!!" Now, I've never been to SERE, but I imagine that no one is taught to do what those two did. Lying there in the middle of a field doesn't sound like evading or escaping to me.
This movie is chock full of Burnett being a complete idiot running through the open fields like he was Julie Andrews on top of a mountain. I just kept waiting for a sniper to pick him off from the tree line. Later, he sits in his olive-drab jump suit on a whitish-gray cement background of a dam, or something. He's just sitting there basking in the sun, as visible as can be with his dark uniform contrasting with the light background. It's no wonder he nearly gets himself killed in that scene or in so many others. Why, if he's on the run behind enemy lines, does he think it's okay to jump into a pickup truck with perfect strangers? Maybe, if this character were smarter, the movie would have been too uneventful, because maybe he AND his pilot would have gotten out alive without ever having to dodge a single bullet. Wouldn't have made much of a story then, I suppose.
Hollywood seems to like to display a certain amount of a politically correct conscience in movies like this one. Joaquim de Almeida gets to play the role of the pan-European, NATO commander who attempts to block Hackman's character from a rescue attempt. De Almeida gets to be the voice of those who criticize U.S. foreign policy by saying that Americans only care about Americans. I have to be somewhat cynical about a line like that. It's as if people had to throw that line into the script so as not to be labeled as jingoistic. I don't know if there was any conscious intent to make Americans look at U.S. foreign policy in a more critical light or to show that the world isn't such a simple place. Whatever the intent, I'm sure there is a way of making that point in a more artful manner, which would not have come off as arrogant, condescending, and insulting to the viewer. I felt as if the writer thought he was smarter than I. Thanks for the unsolicited lesson in geopolitics, Professors David Veloz and Zak Penn. I'll be sure to skip your classes next semester.
All in all, the best parts of Lines are the flight sequences. For viewers who like a lot of explosions and tracer fire, you'll find a good amount of that too. Get your subwoofers and DTS ready. A couple of jokes and wisecracks, Hackman doing a serviceable job, and a few one-dimensional characters round out the rest. I would have made a bee-line for the door, but I was hoping for Wilson's character to redeem himself for his unprofessional behavior behind enemy lines. Thankfully, in the end, I got a little of that. Bottom Line: Skip it.
