Behind Enemy Lines

In "Behind Enemy Lines," the writer, producers, and director apparently got together with some military PsyOps people at which point they asked each other, "How can we best portray the US effort in the Balkans?" "I know," they exclaimed in tandem, "we'll create a glossy, patriotic movie that's completely inaccurate!

"Let's make the Serbs the unshaven evil guys who assassinate Americans. Let's make the Muslims the clean-shaven, peace-loving victims who save the American(s). And let's make the Americans, well, just normal Americans with normal attributes like incontestable honesty, unimaginable bravery, irrefutable nobility, and the rest of it. The problem is, of course, none of it is true.

It's not difficult to understand why movies like this get made. Obviously, to fetch some money. It also helps if they can bolster support for, and simplify the explanation of, dubious wars. But it's a boring template -- a tired, salami-factory formula.

The film does have some special effects -- jumpy ground-level cameras attempt take the nervous viewer closer to bleak, desperate landscapes, etc., -- but it's all been done before. There's nothing remotely innovative here. Indeed, adding special effects on top of so many clichés makes the film seem triter, stupider.

Unless movies co-scripted by the Pentagon are your thing, "Behind Enemy Lines" makes for pretty awful viewing. That it fails on so many levels isn't surprising -- when was the last time the US Government made a good movie?

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It's Christmas day but that doesn't mean that Burnett and Stackhouse will be spared of a mission to fly over war-torn Bosnia.
As they fly over Bosnia, these two brave American soldiers notice that the serbs are still roaming the Bosnia's region but worst of all they discover a mass grave. The hand-blooded serbs don't like the idea of Americans shooting photographs from the plane and reveal their ugly deeds to the world so they Shoot the plane succesfully then things start to go terribly wrong as the Americans are behind dangerous enemy lines.
One gets captured and executed immediately. The other one escapes and this movie is how he survives.

Absolutely accurate. The Serbs and French commanders who back up their war crimes are shown like they truly are.

A must see movie.

Highly Recommended