"Behind Enemy Lines" is a potentially good movie depending on what you want out of it. My primary interest in it was the subject matter: the Bosnian war. This is the major disappointment for me. While the war is the backdrop of the story, this isn’t really about the war. Case in point: we see the mass graves and people being shot, but, without already being familiar with the actual events, we don’t know that this is a factual massacre in Srebrenica. I hoped to learn something new from the movie, but, even though it gave me new questions to ask, I didn’t feel like I walked away more informed.

Other let-downs are some of the visual effects and some poor music selections (particularly when Burnett and Stackhouse are taking off on their mission, some guy is describing his girlfriend’s car, whoop-de-frakin-do). Another low point is the Bosnian dialogue. Most Americans, including myself, won’t be able to tell that there’s anything wrong with the characters that are speaking Bosnian (or Serbo-Croatian), but it tends to make viewers that speak the language cringe. People I have known (including my ex who was a Bosnian native that lived through the war as a teen) actually lost interest in seeing the movie because of the poor portrayal of some of the Serbs.

Still, despite my disappointments, it is very interesting to understand that the key events of the movie are steeped in fact: there was a pilot shot down over Bosnia, there was a massacre with mass graves that were cleverly disguised, and there were military personnel that fit the description and position of those chasing Burnett. I guess this all doesn’t mean a lot if you don’t know what the movie is about, so let me pause and clue you in.

The Bosnian war has ended, but peace is fragile. An American pilot and his navigator, Burnett and Stackhouse, on a photo recon mission accidentally capture some footage that will result in charges of war crimes against some of the Serbian officers. To cover their tracks the Serbs shoot down the jet and chase the crew down with lethal force. For political reasons the Navy can’t just swoop in for a rescue operation which gives the Serb forces time to send a specialist to hunt the Americans and attempt to destroy the evidence.

There is a great deal of excitement peppered with somber and dramatic moments. I don’t know that Owen Wilson was the best choice for the starring role, but Gene Hackman is terrific. I guess I have a hard time seeing Owen in the super-serious, dramatic role; he doesn’t carry the intensity like Mel Gibson or Ewan McGregor can.

I don’t know any of the other actors; a few of them give excellent performances while a few lack, but since most of them have little screen time I won’t go into a lot of detail. Just know that this is not one of those movies where every actor falls in place perfectly.

The story has its high points, but there’s a lot of watching the hero do little more than run from the bad guys. In fact, I thought it could have used less running and more story or could at least be shortened by about 20 minutes. Only so much bullet dodging can be interesting. A perfect story enhancement could have been developing the character of the hunter or at least a follow-up on the boy that helps Burnett instead of just sending him into fiction limbo.