Behind Enemy Lines

Behind Enemy Lines casts Owen Wilson as Navy Lieutenant Chris Burnett, a cocky flight navigator who finds himself trapped deep within enemy territory after his aircraft is shot down during a routine reconnaissance mission over Bosnia. There, Burnett is forced to rely on his training (as well as on the ongoing advice from his concerned fellow officers) to avoid the encroaching advances of a rogue Serbian commando (Vladimir Mashkov’s Sasha). There’s little doubt that Behind Enemy Lines fares best in its opening hour, as screenwriters David Veloz and Zak Penn compensate for the less-than-subtle elements within the storyline (eg Burnett’s eye-rolling transformation from hot-dogging pilot to gung-ho soldier) by placing the emphasis on a series of individually-engaging set pieces – including a riveting (and unexpectedly suspenseful) sequence in which Burnett is forced to hide from his pursuers amongst dozens of muddy corpses. There reaches a point, however, at which the increasingly stagnant narrative becomes impossible to overlook, with the repetitiveness of the film’s midsection exacerbated by John Moore’s aggressively ostentatious visual choices. It subsequently goes without saying that the uniformly strong performances are virtually rendered moot as the film progresses, although Gene Hackman’s expectedly stellar turn as Burnett’s gruff superior proves effective at periodically lifting the movie out of its doldrums. The end result is an effort that slowly-but-surely squanders its solid premise and impressive cast, which is certainly a shame given the can’t-miss nature of the film’s set-up.

** out of ****