Behind Enemy Lines is a popcorn-chomper of the military kind.  It deals, as the name implies, with a pilot shot down behind enemy lines and his command's attempts to retrieve him as he eludes capture.

The place is Bosnia and the time is the 1990s.  The US Navy is flying reconnaisance patrols off the USS Carl Vinson.   The US military is not involved in combat operations; they're just monitoring.  Flying and watching and flying and watching. 

Wiseass Navy pilot Lt Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson) has had it - he's put in his resignation papers, to the clearly expressed irritation of Admiral Reigart (Gene Hackman).  Maybe that's why he gets Christmas Day duty, flying as navigator with Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht) piloting.

The US military is under severe restrictions about where they can and can't go, but when the recon plane shows some interesting activity just over the line, Burnett urges Stackhouse to go take a look.  (You don't really expect a military character who's the movie lead to follow orders, do you?)

So they fly into the forbidden zone, and something is going on down there - they're not sure what, but they photograph it.  That's before they get shot down. 

Some spectacular jet eluding missile footage, but the movie title gives away the eventual outcome.  Ejection seats ensure that the two men survive the spectacular breakup of their airplane. 

But their trouble is just beginning.  Stackhouse has been injured.  Burnett has to leave him to get to higher ground in order to radio back to the ship.  While Burnett is away, Stackhouse is surrounded by troops.  As Burnett watches through his binoculars, Stackhouse is questioned and then shot in the head.  The troops know that Burnett is out there and are looking for him, but he eludes them.  He radios the ship to tell them that Stackhouse has been shot and he is on his own and requesting extraction.

Back on the ship, the command knows they have a plane down, and are preparing a rescue operation.  But their NATO liaison stops them.  The ejector seat beacons indicate that the plane went down over the line; the US military can't cross that line and get their pilot.   Burnett is told that he has to make it back across the line into territory where they can legally come get him.

So Burnett is on his own, on foot across a landscape made hellish by civil war.

Some plusses and minuses of Behind Enemy Lines:

The look and feel and sound of the US military portions are spot-on.  The producers had the full cooperation of the US Navy and the authenticity shows. 

On the ground, it's hard to tell who the bad guys are.  I'm not sure whether that's a plus or a minus, because Burnett doesn't know, either.   There are men in uniform and heavily armed men not in uniform.  All he's sure of is that he has to elude the ones who are shooting at him.  At one point, he's given a lift by armed people not in uniform.  They must be the other side from the ones who are trying to kill him, but it's a tense situation.  The teenager who likes American music, though, you know he's got to be on our side.

The biggest implausibility of the entire movie is the number of rounds of ammunition that are fired at Burnett without hitting him.  That's a longstanding film tradition, but the producers really push it here. 

What's the whole pursuit about, anyway?  Why are the pursuers so determined to kill this one guy?  It's because of what the plane overflew.  New mass graves and proof of genocide. 

In one creepy scene, as the military forces are closing in on Burnett, back on the ship a technician has hacked into a commercial satellite and can track heat signatures.  ("This isn't technically legal, sir", the tech tells the admiral.)  They can see Burnett as a moving figure of light, and the moving figures of light who are closing in on him.  And then Burnett stops moving, and the pursuers close in..... and then move right past him

Back on the ground, we learn the gruesome explanation.  Burnett has stumbled into a muddy pit full of corpses and is hiding under a rotting corpse.  The soldiers don't realize how close they are, and the smell encourages them not to linger.

Performances - Gene Hackman looks like he was born wearing Navy khakis.   I have a soft spot for Owen Wilson, but have to admit that he always plays pretty much the same character.  Can anyone point me to a Wilson role that wasn't a smart aleck?  (Though come to think of it, is that a bad thing?  In Hollywood's Golden Age, the stars would find a persona that worked for them and stick with it.  The Girl Next Door didn't play the Vamp, or vice versa.  Today's stars might try to avoid type-casting, but how many of you lined up to see Julia Roberts play a mousy 19th century maid?)

For all its improbability and time-honored movie cliches, Behind Enemy Lines is an exciting movie.  Not exactly gritty realism, but never boring.

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