Doh! (Behind Enemy Lines (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Behind Enemy Lines (DVD)
Date:	25/01/02 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: What?

Disadvantages: Stupid, crude politics, awful performances

Even if you aren't a die-hard leftie like me, the politics on display in the standard American action movie are often breathtaking: naïve, gung-ho, mindless and bordering on the fascist. Might is Right, Americans can do no wrong, and the solution to any complex political situation involves finding some foreign stereotypes, and killing them. Despite its occasional fits and starts of sentiment, 'Black Hawk Down' at least existed in some sort of reality: 'Behind Enemy Lines' is quite staggeringly cartoonish in its approach.

Like 'Black Hawk', this is a film based on a true story, that of NATO pilot Scott O'Grady, who was shot down over Serb territory and managed to survive behind enemy lines for ten days before being recovered. At a time when American involvement in the Balkans was unpopular, O'Grady's adventure was a shot in the arm, a moment of sheer American heroism in the midst of unsatisfying, resolution-free politics. Everyone from Bill Clinton down wanted to be photographed next to O'Grady, and the only person in the media frenzy who appeared to want to play down the heroism of the escapade was O'Grady himself.

For a film, O'Grady's story is quite interesting, but it utterly lacks the conventional heroism and bombast required for a big Hollywood picture. So while the bare bones of the story remain - US pilot is shot down over the Balkans and lives to tell the tale - everything is transmogrified into fiction. The names change, and the hero (played by Owen Wilson) is catapulted into a conspiracy. Snarling Serb villains are attempting to cover up some mass graves, and the pilot must evade the clutches of a diabolical Serb sniper (whose menace is undermined by the fact that he spends the whole film in a shell-suit). Meanwhile his commanding officer (Gene Hackman) sits aboard the aircraft carrier, desperate to go in for an all-guns-blazing rescue.

It's crap, basically. Wilson is m
arooned; his trademark dopey wit completely redundant without someone to bounce it off, and his performance is poor. Even worse is Hackman, strutting around the boat set looking exceptionally uncomfortable with his flat dialogue and complete lack of proper character. The script, stitched together with hyperbolic action sequences and crude flag-waving, is seemingly unaware of anything approaching reality.

The point of the movie is to provide a picture of understandable movie cliché: one man against the odds, an army desperate to save its man, evil villains, whiter-than-white heroes. The way in which the west fiddled while ethnic cleansing burned is replaced by upstanding Americans stepping in the save the hordes of broken-English talking Bosnians who don't even have the manners to thank their saviours. The attitude to NATO is particularly illuminating - the chief NATO representative (Joachim de Almeida) is a by-the-book Portuguese, who specifically explains to Hackman than rushing in to save the pilot might spare his life, but because of the political sensibilities, might endanger hundreds of lives. When the time comes, Hackman decides to do what he likes and sod the rest of Europe, the kind of kick ass, ask questions later approach that has made such a mess of the world since 1945. And we're supposed to applaud.

Of all the wars of recent decades, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia is the most ugly, the most complex, and the most intractable. War crimes on a massive scale were committed by people who had embarrassing links to the West, while UK and US politicians happily turned a blind eye. 'Behind Enemy Lines' is a shoddy, wish-fulfilment action flick that attempts to rewrite twentieth-century history for an American audience who couldn't find Bosnia on a map, to reclaim that ugly mess as some sort of US triumph. It wasn't, and even in terms of an action film, this is notably poor, with a faltering pace, awful dialogue,
and only the scant compensations of some solid effects work to keep you awake.

Summary: