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If you go to see Spy Game in the theaters, you will be treated to five different previews. Every one is an advertisement for an upcoming war movie, and most involve lone Americans either captured by the enemy or
trying to avoid capture. After dithering for a couple months, Hollywood execs have clearly decided that the public wants flag-waving war movies. If Behind Enemy Lines is indicative of the trend, I can only hope it's
short-lived.

Owen Wilson plays a hot-shot navy pilot named Burnett who's anxious to get into battle. Unfortunately for him, his mission is to fly reconnaissance over Bosnia to enforce a peace accord, and he doesn't even get to do that very often. But after irritating Admiral Reigart, his commanding officer (played by Gene Hackman), he and his flying buddie O'Malley draw the Christmas Day flying assignment.

For reasons the movie doesn't make clear, the Americans are limited to flying exact, well-known routes. That would seem to defeat the purpose of peacekeeping reconnaissance, but then what do I know? Burnett can't stand to be pinned down, however, so he deviates from his course and inadvertently takes pictures of Serbs doing bad things. The Serbs don't take kindly to Burnett's show of initiative, so they fire two missiles at
his F-18 fighter. This leads to a long, video-game-like sequence as the Americans try to out-run and -maneuver the missiles. After some incongruous freeze-frames and lots of shaky camera movement, the plane is shot down and the two pilots eject.

Since the Serbs think they've been found out, they're not content to destroy the plane; they need to shoot the pilots as well. The actor who plays O'Malley is largely unknown, so it's not surprising that he's soon killed off. This leaves Burnett to run around the Bosnian landscape, eluding the Serbs and waiting to be rescued.

This last point would seem to be a fairly easy task, but then the movie would only be 30 minutes long. Therefore, various obstacles must be put in Reigart's way, most courtesy of NATO (and distinctly foreign) Admiral Piquet, who predictably could care less about one American pilot. This gives Hackman plenty of chances to stew about foreign interference, Wilson more time to scream into his walkie-talkie, and director John Moore more opportunities to impress us with his frenetic camera movement.

Like most big Hollywood directors, Moore (in his feature debut) has spent too much time watching Saving Private Ryan. But unlike Spielberg, who knows when to jiggle the camera and when to leave it stationary, Moore trots out every trick in the book without every wondering if it contributes to the story. So we have freeze-frames for no reason, hand-held cameras for no reason, swirling Steadicam shots for no reason, and lots and lots of shaking going on.

All of this is supposedly being done in the service of realism. Behind Enemy Lines, like Spy Game and most war movies of recent memory, bases its scenario on a real situation and uses lots and lots of military equipment (Behind Enemy Lines was shot on a real aircraft carrier) to make it convincing.

The central problem is that these movies are mistaking verisimilitude for realism. Their creators assume that scenarios based on real-life situations (peacekeeping in Bosnia, the "failed" mission in Somalia) using intense sound design, graphic violence, and shaky hand-held cameras foster a sense of immediate realism. Spy Game goes so far as to use an actual date (April 14, 1991) even though that very specificity undermines the story's believability, and Behind Enemy Lines has the audacity to run a post-narrative synopsis as if its characters were real people. In neither case is this emphasis on verisimilitude effective. In fact, it's counter-productive in that it highlights the falseness of the movies' emotions, the emptiness of their patriotic rhetoric, and their near-pornographic obsession with military hardware.

This last point is especially problematic given the U.S. military's near monopolistic control in the age of verisimilitude. Given that no war movie can attain the "realism" the public supposedly requires without using
actual combat vehicles, ships, and planes, the military now has the power to greenlight only those scripts it deems acceptable. No wonder that almost no anti-military movies have come out of Hollywood in the last several years, and that its antipathy for interfering bureaucrats has only grown.

By substituting verisimilitude for realism, Hollywood often ignores the deeper emotions of the human condition. Why struggle with what courage or heroism truly entails when you can coast on knee-jerk vengeance? Why
explore the complexities of mourning and loss when faceless death will suffice? And heaven forbid that any film might try to present the complexities of the situation in Bosnia or China or the Middle East when it's so much easier just to cue the star's close-up.

Behind Enemy Lines is a miserable example of the new war movie, with a ludicrous story, inadequate acting, and genuinely incompetent direction. Unfortunately, I suspect there are many more to come. 

J. Robert Parks 12/5/2001