In a partial re-enactment of at least one Balkan-War mission gone wrong, Burnett evades the ruthless Serb leader, Lokar (Polish actor Oleg Krupa), and his even more ruthless sidekick, Tracker (Vladimir Mashkov). Back on the carrier, meanwhile, the NATO commander (Joaquim De Almeida) is more concerned with preserving the fragile ceasefire than with rescuing Burnett. In the end, it is Reigart who puts his career on the line to rescue the pilot he had once dismissed as a man unready to serve his country.
“Behind Enemy Lines,” says co-writer Penn, “is not really about flying-jet heroics; it’s about a regular guy caught up in incredible circumstances.” And, for that reason, the casting of Wilson - best-known for his comic roles in films like Shanghai Noon and Zoolander - has turned out to be ideal. “We needed someone who could give us something different, and that’s exactly what Owen did,” says Davis. “He’s charismatic and funny, and we also learned that he does the action stuff very well. He brings a natural quality that is easy to relate to, much like Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and Steve McQueen did in their day. But Owen also brings the kind of strong edge required for the role.”
| “We wanted to bring this genre into the
21st century by dealing with the complexities of
current warfare and how that affects the men
and women who are serving their country” |
The actor had to earn his fee in more ways than one. Take the sequence where he ejects from his F/A-18. “In an ejection situation, there are 164 different mechanical operations that occur in 1.2 seconds,” explains director John Moore, who was hired on the basis of a ground-breaking SEGA commercial but turns out to be something of a military-equipment nut. “We wanted to give a taste of that process, and not the typical ‘Pop, there you go’ portrayal. We continually asked ourselves, ‘How can we make a given scene more difficult?’” he continues. “Every stunt and action scene was designed to keep the eye busy, and to look like anything but a ‘typical’ Hollywood stunt.”
“From that two-to-three minute spot, we could tell that John sees things differently than most film-makers,” says Davis. “He has his own language of storytelling, of making it feel fresh. The camera is like an extension of his arm.”
“John presents a strange and foreign world we haven’t seen before,” adds a ruefully respectful Wilson. “As Burnett makes his way through enemy lines, John takes you, the audience, out of a comfort zone, dropping you into the middle of hell, just as he has Burnett.”
The core of the film, though, is the relationship that gradually builds between Burnett and Reigart, who represent two generations of soldier but who slowly develop a deep respect for one another. “Reigart’s a hard man, but he’s someone who goes to the mat when he feels he is right about something,” says Hackman. “He feels that his men come first: that is what drives him to mount a dangerous rescue mission and jeopardise his career to retrieve Burnett. That kind of commitment, added to Burnett’s journey of survival, makes the film more than an action film; it’s really a tale of the human spirit. The relationship that develops between Reigart and Burnett gives the film its heart and its drive.”
“As Burnett makes his way through enemy lines, John takes you, the audience, out of a comfort zone, dropping you into the middle of hell, just as he has Burnett”
Owen Wilson
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Behind Enemy Lines was shot on location in the Carpathian mountains (standing in for nearby Bosnia) and in Koliba Studios in the Slovak capital of Bratislava. An entire fictional town - the Muslim enclave of Hac - was created (and destroyed) for the film, whose production designer, Nathan Crawley, built an ice lake and a 40-foot, partially destroyed statue of an angel on a cliff overlooking it.
But the most important part of the film, for Moore, was the time they spent aboard the USS Vinson. “John needed to be on that carrier, with the jets taking off overhead and flying under him,” says Davis. “He wanted to get the greatest shots you’ve ever seen, putting himself sometimes in the middle of harm’s way to get them.”
“It was an incredible privilege to work there, but it was also a difficult, hostile working environment: hot and noisy, with the men serving on it going 24/7 every day,” admits the young director. “It was like living in a garbage can with somebody outside beating it with a baseball bat.
“But working on Behind Enemy Lines gave us a chance to interact with the ‘guys’: the pilots, mechanics and technicians. Their help and input were phenomenal. I made the movie for them.”
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BEHIND ENEMY LINES
Twentieth Century Fox presents a Davis Entertainment Company production
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Prod: John Davis; Exec prod: Stephanie Austin, Wyck Godfrey; Dir: John Moore; Scr: David Veloz, Zak Penn, from a story by James Thomas and John Thomas; Ph: Brendan Galvin; Prod des: Nathan Crawley; Cost des: George L Little; Ed: Paul Martin Smith; Tech adviser: Capt David Kennedy, USN Ret; Casting: Eyde Belasco, Sheila Trezise; Mus: Don Davis.
With Owen Wilson (Lieutenant Chris Burnett), Gene Hackman (Admiral Reigart), Gabriel Macht (Stackhouse), Charles Malik Whitfield (Sergeant Rodway), Joaquim De Almeida (Admiral Piquet), David Keith (Master Chief O’Malley), Oleg Krupa (Lokar), Vladimir Mashkov (Tracker), Marko Igonda (Bazda).
International distribution:
Twentieth Century Fox.
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