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| COURTESY PHOTO - 20th Century Fox
Owen Wilson plays Chris Burnett, a soldier battling both nature and his enemies while stranded in Bosnia.
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Nothing 'Lines' up
By William Clemens
Flat Hat Reviews Editor
The premise sounds solid enough. Two fighter pilots are shot down over Bosnia during a reconnaissance mission. One dies and the other, Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson), must battle both the wilderness and his human pursuers and try to get out of the country alive. There's even room for commentary about a soldier's duty and Clinton-era military politics. Throw in high production values and a ton of flashy special effects and there's no way it can fail. Unfortunately, the movie falls to pieces almost immediately.
The soundtrack is the film's most blatant weakness. It either over-dramatizes scenes or clashes horribly. When Burnett takes off for his mission, there's a pop song about a new car playing. Almost every scene that's supposed to be dramatic has some kind of orchestrated music playing and every once in a while the movie utilizes some techno.
Then there is the cinematography. Director John Moore began his career doing commercials and his inexperience with movies shows. The shots go from annoying to painful. For instance, there are music video-style moments that are fortunately few and far between, but still go a long way in destroying the serious mood of the film. There are also bizarre psychedelic shots. For example, whenever the tracker (Vladimir Mashkov) sent to hunt Burnett down comes on screen, the camera will start flying around and panning on him at weird angles. Most of the battles use this kind of style. Images of people shooting or dying will suddenly flash on the screen, completely disorienting the viewer. This is probably symbolic of the chaos of war, but it looks more like the cameraman has a drug problem.
Moore also has a weird obsession with pan-around shots. Pretty much every shot pans around something. The camera will pan around Burnett, then around whomever he's talking to, then to a random tree. One scene that particularly abuses this technique is when Burnett is sitting on a mountain contemplating what's happened. The pretty, orchestrated music starts, then the camera pans above him in one direction, switches and pans around in the other, then pans around from under him.
The absolute worst scenes, however, are the ones of Burnett running away from something (which make up a good chunk of the movie). The camera will bounce up and down and jerk around sporadically, as if trying to induce motion sickness. It's like a re-enactment of "The Blair Witch Project." The only difference is that Burnett doesn't only run through forests; sometimes he runs through deserted cities.
But wait, there are more problems. Gene Hackman somehow ended up in this mess as Adm. Reigart, the guy in charge of saving Burnett's bacon. What little screen time he has is wasted on him a) looking pouty, b) being indecisive or c) being yelled at by NATO Adm. Piquet (Joaquim De Almeida).
To top it all off, the final scene is incredibly fake. But by this point the viewer is probably laughing anyway; the hamminess of the film increases rapidly to a point where it just can't be taken seriously.
Redeeming qualities? Aspiring directors can learn how not to shoot a movie.
Behind Enemy Lines - **
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