Behind Enemy Lines

This action picture from 2001 is a marvel of odd choices.  Owen Wilson (Anaconda, Cars 3) as a downed Navy fighter pilot in enemy territory who must run the gauntlet of war-torn Bosnia to escape to a friendly country next door is miscast.  His laid back jokey demeanor doesn’t fit with the character.  Most of the runtime calls for him to be in awe, pain, anger, display stoicism, remain defiant, etc. but he never really gets there.  He’s too much of a lightweight compared to the more intense tone of every other aspect the production is aiming for.

The editing I can’t go too hard on considering the style of the time but the chaotic moments are damn annoying.  Every once in a while it goes into a frantic seizure with rapid cuts, zooms, camera spinning, slow motion, sped up motion and other gimmickry.  Be careful, suffering whiplash is a real threat here.

Moving on, the soundtrack is all over the goddamn place with pop songs seemingly chosen at random like “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles used during a scene where Wilson and co. fool around propelling a football off the deck of an aircraft carrier at incredible velocity.  But then there’s also techno bangers, villain cues reminiscent of Brad Fiedel’s T2 with metal clanging, dramatic choir singing and your typical driving orchestral pounding.  Again, the tones don’t line up.

But what about all that sweet action?  Well, it’s both cool at times (Wilson’s jet being chased by two heat seeking missiles is tense as hell, followable, fast paced and damn exciting, although the scene is twice as long as it needs to be) and comical at times (Wilson must run through a crumbling factory lined with trip wires all setup adjacent to each other like fifty or sixty in a row like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon and who the hell stacked this shit like this?  No strategy or thought was put into placing them).

Strangely everything is mismatched so much that it comes back around to being kinda interesting.  It nearly works as a whole even though any individual element is a head scratcher.  Every actor is taking the material deadly seriously and then Owen Wilson pops in to do a whiny “aw c’mon”.  Some of the shots are neat like the POV of the catapult that launches the jets off the aircraft carrier or the extreme slow motion of a baddie getting blown away by a trip mine.  But then other parts are a cheese-fest like Wilson’s constant headbutting with his superior officer (Gene Hackman (Extreme Measures, Young Frankenstein)) or his saccharine relationship with his smiling and always supportive co-pilot (Gabriel Macht (The Spirit, Whiteout)) who’s way too upbeat so you know damn well he won’t last long.

This was director John Moore’s first feature and he went on to not have the best track record which includes the pointless 2006 The Omen remake and the sad sequel A Good Day to Die Hard.  I can see how this film would spark interest though.  There’s enough good, even great, stuff to give him more projects.  Maybe he would abandon some of the sillier of-the-times techniques and mature with subsequent films but the material didn’t really pan out.  He doesn’t seem to have been active since 2016.

So there’s plenty to enjoy and plenty to mock here.  From Hackman’s gruff performance to the title being the plot.  The entire thing is basically just Owen Wilson going to a place, getting shot at, navigating a set of obstacles particular to that location, running away (there’s A LOT of running in this) and evading death for a short period until the next set piece.  Repeat ad nauseum.  Each circumstance is entertaining and pretty wild but almost immediately becomes laughable due to Wilson’s bottomless dumb luck and the ineptitude of his pursuers.  He should’ve easily died twenty times over.

Take that for what you will.  It’s messy absurd fun and a time capsule of early 2000’s junk when major movie studios still made straight ahead genre action shit like this.  The same concept would be done much better decades later, albeit in only one act, in Top Gun: Maverick.

*Spoiler for this final paragraph* Lastly I have to mention the weird decision made by Owen Wilson at the end of the movie to stay in the Navy after putting in his letter of resignation earlier in the film.  You would think the insane situation he barely survived where he had a thousand brushes with death would make him want to exit the Navy even more.  But nope, instead his resolve is strengthened.