A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Behind Enemy Lines is one of the most underrated movies of all time. Owen Wilson delivers a performance of a lifetime; Gene Hackman is his stalwart best and I fail to comprehend why this movie does not stand among the ranks of popular titles such as Black Hawk Down and American Sniper since you will find this movie as exciting and recounts the true sequence of events that led to the U.S. bombing of Serbia. The plot builds in the final stages of the Serbian invasion of Bosnia in 1995 and how an American F/A-18 veers off cours (as part of NATO mission on recon missions documenting all they witnessed) spots war machine buildup - the Serbians running a charade of lie, deceit and ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian people didn't want this secret to be out, send potent Russian SAMs and bring down the U.S. jet. The Serbs locate the ejected pilots while murdering one look for the other (Navy flight officer Lieutenant Chris Burnett), who is now on the run for his life) while blame the whole episode on the Bosnians. Then ensues one of the most heart-pounding chase of Burnett by the barbaric Serbian forces. The movies attempts to show with restraint and bravado, the real tale of the Serbian leadership committing war crimes and genocide of the Bosnian people with Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic at the helm and their murdering forces who ravage Bosnia with the cover of fake diplomacy and lobbying with help from the Russians. This diplomatic scheme prevents the U.S. to officially recover Burnett and/or take any action. Back aboard USS Carl Vinson Admiral Reigart (Gene Hackman) appears helpless in recovery of his pilot since all his patriotic attempts were thwarted by a corrupt ranking French Admiral (Joaquim De Almeida) overrules any discussion leading to recovery of Lieutenant Burnett. This movies combines the trails of diplomatic jousting with heart-stopping on the ground war action in what can be termed as an epic and deserved more viewership if not on the account of a solid war movie then on the merits of bringing the truth to the fore about the genocide of the Bosnian people and the bold steps taken by President Bill Clinton with U.S.-led airstrikes against a terrorist regime of Serbia and helping end the rape and murder of innocent Bosnian people and for that Director John Moore and Writer Jim Thomas deserve a lot of credit. In my books this movie ranks among the very best and on the merits of the movie itself deserves 7.8/10In closing this is the best 106 mins. of entertainment and educating that you can bring to your couch and understand the basics of American intervention and eventually appreciate why America is the voice of all disadvantaged people of this world.

Behind Enemy LinesIt is a flat exhausting line from top to the bottom with nothing promising enough to hold on except Owen Wilson.

Entertaining movie, had to suspend belief for some of the scenes, but had enough action to fill up 2 hours or so. I would have given this movie more stars if it were not for the buttfumble of the movie casting world, casting Owen Wilson in the part of a Navy Pilot. This is comparable to casting DJ Qualls, the skinny kid from Road Trip, in a movie where he is the winning Quarterback of a football team. Owen Wilson was absolutely the wrong choice for the part, he is far too goofy, too much the California hippie dim witted character, and is much better suited for stuff like he did in Zoolander. Beyond this, it is not a bad movie, just could be better with an actor other than Owen Wilson.

Lt Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson) is a Navy Navigator who has now become uninterested in further pursuing his career in this role. He effectively resigns and hand his notice in to his commanding officer Admiral Leslie Reigert (Gene Hackman). Reigert informs him that he'll allow Burnett to stay on for a further two weeks after which time he will be relieved of duty. Following this, Burnett along with his colleague pilot Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht) are sent out on a holiday mission, but things take a turn for the worse when they enter an unauthorised area and find themselves under attack from Serbian militants. Their plane gets shot down, Stackhouse gets killed and Burnett finds himself on the run from the militants. Reigert does everything in his power to rescue his navigator, but his superiors refuse to authorise a rescue. With Burnett battling against impossible odds, will he survive this nightmare ordeal? One major problem this film has is that it's very weak in terms of story telling- we have a very sketchy narrative about the war in Bosnia, the genocide that occurred in Bosnia is almost completely glossed over (there are one or two flashbacks, but the film doesn't do much to emotionally engage the viewer - which is quite poor when you think about the atrocities that occurred and how much of an impact could have been made on the viewer). It's also clear that no-one is likely to accuse the writers of being objective in their story telling -there definitely seems to be a lot of bias and 'flag waving' going on from what I saw.The positives that can be drawn from this film are that, despite its misgivings, it is actually a suspenseful and engaging film. When watching this film, I was reminded of The Naked Prey which was basically one man's survival against a large number of people against all odds with limited resources. Burnett's rather elaborate escapes were clever and entertaining and therefore I did enjoy this aspect of the film (albeit from a somewhat superficial perspective). The visuals and cinematography were also impressive. In some ways, these things are great as they do make the film enjoyable and great to look at, but in some ways they also have the opposite effect by over powering the film and limiting the story - evidently I see good and bad here.As far as acting goes, Hackman was as solid and reliable as ever. Wilson was also fairly good. The ending was a little overblown and 'Hollywood' and it wasn't helped by a somewhat cheesy final line from Burnett.This is a fairly enjoyable film if you look at it as a suspenseful 'one man against the odds film' but outside of this it's a film that should have had a much stronger narrative and it should have had more of an emotive core. It's OK as far as action and suspense go, but it's weak in its story telling.