Behind Enemy Lines

I first saw this one in theater a couple of months after 9/11. I was at West Point Prep at the time, having already spent a few years in the Army and I bounced hard off this film because nothing in it made sense.

That's not how officers act. That's not how deployments work. That's not how you search for a downed pilot.

Watching again, those all still hold true. This is a film that doesn't understand the physics of its own world - from the military aspects (that's not how missiles, parachutes, or bullets work) to the geography of its own scenes. At one point, Wilson's Burnett is running up a hill to escape the Serbian forces which are shooting at him. This is addressed both visually by the view of the hill and via dialogue. How then, does Burnett fall down the hill to evade incoming fire?

But the part that really sums up the film is Owen Wilson's trademark 'Oh wow' declaration. The kind of mild, humorous declaration of shock he's given in pretty much every film since Luke Wilson showed him a flipbook in Bottle Rocket. In this film, he says that while changing a field dressing on his pilot's wounded leg.

A good flick to background while drinking a beer after mowing the lawn, but not much more.