The ride starts on the USS Carl Vinson, in the water near Bosnia. In his first starring role, Owen Wilson (Meet the Parents) plays Naval flight navigator Chris Burnett, who has just decided to resign from the Navy after serving seven unfruitful years. Before he's done, though, his commanding officer (Gene Hackman) sends him on a holiday reconnaissance mission over Bosnia, and a suspicious radar signal leads him and his pilot off course. When they investigate, they are shot down by rebel Serbian troops, and, with his pilot dead, Burnett is stranded alone in enemy territory.

      Basically, take a half cup of Top Gun, a teaspoon of Batt 21, a dash of Crimson Tide, and you have Behind Enemy Lines. It's a fairly generic action movie with many of the usual military elements. An awesome surface-to-air fight involving Burnett's plane is the best that can be said about director Moore's directorial skills, but that isn't to say the rest isn't any fun. Having rock music blare while Navy men play football on the deck on an aircraft carrier is just as entertaining as watching Tom Cruise and his comrades play beach volleyball in 1986's Top Gun. It's a commonly playful portrayal of the U.S. military in film, probably because it feels better to watch a group of football-loving red-blooded American men defeat the sinister, non-English speaking villains.

      And feel good it does. Though it would help to have a consistently credible story to back things up. For action movies, screenwriters really don't do as much research as they should and instead focus solely on telling an entertaining story. While this can be a good thing -- nobody wants a complicated plot mucking things up -- you can only stretch the believability line so far. Once you've gone too far, the rest of the movie goes downhill, and eventually all you have is a few reels of fancy explosions and fast cuts. With Behind Enemy Lines, this line is crossed at a vital moment in the film's story, and it subsequently makes the film less than what it could have been.

      With that problem, there are also other matters of unoriginality and predictability to tend to -- especially with regard to Gene Hackman. He's likely the main reason the movie was greenlit, and his casting is almost as generic as the film's title: His character is your basic stern commander who loses the audience's respect early in the film, then gets it back with a growing heart and a triumphant act of courage in the finale. It's fortunate that Hackman has a seasoned history of acting the tough authority figure, because otherwise his role would have become tedious the first time an officer salutes him.

      This was Owen Wilson's show though, and luckily his face is covered in dirt and scars throughout most of the film, so it's easier to concentrate on his character rather than his disfigured nose. This also allows him to show that he knows what he's doing with his charactrer, and though he isn't flawless, he does enough to steer the movie in the right direction. He's a goofy personality that creates the appropriate comic relief, while at the same time knowing how and when to be serious. And a character like that is important to the entertainment value of almost every action movie.

      With Behind Enemy Lines, don't, in any way, expect a true-to-life account of a military search and rescue operation. Instead, if you plan on trying to enjoy it, don't think too hard about its plausibility -- or lack thereof. The movie serves its purpose as a piece of entertainment, and that's about it.

Andy Zientek, 2001