War game

>> Behind Enemy Lines strives to be a thoughtful action movie

by MATTHEW HAYS

Owen Wilson is the hero in Behind Enemy Lines, a dear, blond, wise-cracking soldier who's an all-American slice of apple pie. But he wants to leave the navy, dammit, because he feels the American military has somehow been constrained, and he spends all his time on routine missions looking around--and never getting to blow anything up.

A bizarre little contradiction: a character who's supposed to be really, really good, but who's also hungering for war. Such is the stuff of Hollywood studio fare, full of bizarre ideological contradictions. Indeed, first-time director John Moore (who arrives via the wonderful world of advertising) has taken on a tricky task in terms of genre, attempting to make a thinking-man's action movie, a type we tend to see as brainless.

Wilson, on one of his final gigs before stepping down, flies over the Bosnia region, which, according to this film, is newly peaceful after a treaty has been brokered. It's strictly a picture-taking mission, but it seems some of America's allies have genocidal secrets they'd like to keep under wraps, and thus the plane is shot down. Wilson must fend off the Cossacks, or Bosnians or--who are these fellas? Let's just refer to them as the People With Funny Accents (PWFA), for short. They're really evil, and they're out to get him. But Wilson's commander, played by the always-great Gene Hackman, can't send in a rescue force because America has its hands tied by some dreadful treaty. Being the world's cop can be such a downer!

Here's where the film is thoughtful, though: it does make the point that American foreign policy, and the bedfellows America has chosen in this part of the world, has led to a great deal of death and suffering. It's an intriguing point, given where we are in world affairs (and the fact that it clearly was completely inadvertent in terms of that timeliness), but don't expect director Moore to read like some commie diatribe or anything.

After delivering some truly great action sequences--plane blowing up (the best crash since Cast Away), shoot-and-run scenes, orgasmic explosions--the film can't help itself and descends into irritating jingoism. Behind Enemy Lines is as beautiful as the prettiest ad, and it stands up as an example of a perfect studio balancing act: a film that manages to entertain, embrace individualism and soak itself in patriotic conformity all at the same time.

Behind Enemy Lines opens Friday, Nov. 30