En territoire ennemi II

You pick a DVD like this up off the 'discount rack' for 5.00 you don't expect much. But this was a surprisingly good little movie made on a shoestring budget that doesn't look it. I liked the original Behind the Lines well enough but this movie is just fine in its own right. The actors/soldiers are young and Hung-ho which you'd expect. The plot moves along and doesn't have every cliché you usually see coming a mile away. The action scenes with their jittery camera work are rapidly paced & well done in my view. The political side of the story looks professional and pretty believable. Having seen every great war movie there is many times over, I give this movie a solid thumbs up and definitely worth a look.

North Korea has developed a nuclear long range missile that can reach America. It's almost ready for launch, and the American president has few other options but ordering a military strike to remove the threat.

A navy seal team is put together and sent to the missile site to go undercover and destroy the facility, making it seem like an accident thus preventing provoking North Korea into retileration, which could quickly blow up into a full scale war causing millions of lives lost.

A very real world scenario, and it's a good background for a thrilling movie. However, with all this realism you would want more realism from the plot. There are so many holes in the plot, if the movie was a bucket, it would have water pour straight through the bottom.

For example, why would a surgical strike with stealth bombers be more provokative than sending a team of trigger happy seals behind enemy lines, blasting everything sky high for everyone to see? Yet, the whole tension is about the navy seals finishing their mission in time before the surgical strike is the only option left, naturally with no communication abilities with HQ to report about progress, and the usual war hungry American military adviser pushing for the most dangerous options.

The movie is also way too political correct. There are no bad-guys, South Koreans work together with the Americans, and even the North Koreans are good guys who are secretly on the Americans side. Only one person is left as the bad guy, Kim jong Il, North Koreas dictator.

I was also surprised to see how poor the special effects were. Reminded me of something from the early 80's. Blood splatter from gunfire was clearly just painted on top of the movie during post processing, and having a poorly done 3D model of the nuclear missile rotate around on a screen in the presidents conference room just made it look comical.

All in all, messy, inaccurate and most of all, predictable and pretty boring stuff. The first behind enemy lines was just a million times better in all aspects.

Pros: some really nice cinematography gave this film a hint of artistic credibility. Some OK action sequences. Performances aren't offensively bad, unlike the premise.

Cons: the TVesque use of sped up sequences and dodgy CGI are the downside to production. Only one female character. Typically ludicrous action film dialogue and overuse of flashbacks make this hard to watch while the plot is hard to stomach.

What more could you expect from US filmmakers during wartime than something to make you feel proud to be American and perhaps even join in the fight against fight evil? This time the evil doers are the North Koreans, who have developed an Intercontinental Ballistic missile (ICBM) which has the capability of delivering a WMD to American soil. And how dare they, when the US and her allies are the the only countries allowed to keep such weapons in the name of freedom! To remedy this a team of navy seals parachute into North Korea and then the film gets really tacky. The use of light filters in EVERY SINGLE SCENE in North Korea gives the country (and people) a colourless lifeless feel (because they are evil). The Nth Korean military are depicted first abusing civilians then committing war crimes. The seals are assisted by some South Korean soldiers sent to help them escape from 'behind enemy lines', who of course immediately begin taking orders from the yanks. All the while, back in the war room the president agonises over whether or not to drop a vast number of bombs on the Koreans because unlike them, he is not evil.

This movie was well enough put together to be enjoyable for anyone so brain dead they can swallow the whole flag waving god bless America rubbish without firing the odd neuron in protest. However if you prefer your war drama to be based on reality rather than fantasy, just re-screen a copy of The Thin Red Line and pretend they never made this film.

Looks like some producers at Fox remembered they made a pretty good little military thriller a decade or so ago; that film was BEHIND ENEMY LINES, casting the unlikely Owen Wilson as a soldier stranded in a hostile country and forced to fight his way out with help from the reliable Gene Hackman.

BEHIND ENEMY LINES II: AXIS OF EVIL has absolutely NOTHING in common with that movie. Instead this is a dumb, offensive and blockheaded pseudo-thriller that manages to offend everybody it depicts, from the Asian stereotypes to the knuckle-dragging US military. The plot, in which a crack squad are sent behind enemy lines in North Korea to destroy a missile, is as dumb as it sounds and the film is loaded with errors, both factual and otherwise.

You know you're in trouble from the outset, with James Dodson's direction winning the difficult position of being the worst thing about the film (and when the script is this bad, that's an impressive achievement). Dodson appears to be on speed throughout, cutting like there's no tomorrow and going in for dodgy/crazy shaky-cam effects throughout. The result is a film that's very nearly unwatchable.

The acting is pitiful and you end up feeling sorry for the recognisable faces who've clearly fallen on hard times; among them are Keith David, Ben Cross and Peter Coyote, a trio of former stars who must be wondering what sins they committed in a past life in order for them to appear in this. The action scenes are among the worst I've seen and the whole patriotic flag-waving stuff is vomit-inducing indeed. Give it a miss!

I took a quick look at the other user comments for this movie before writing this, and I saw that no one from South Korea (or for that matter North Korea) has so far contributed their thoughts. But I am pretty sure that any South Korean who sees this movie will feel as badly about this movie as I do. This movie is really badly made. The director CONSTANTLY jiggles the camera during the action sequences, enough so that these sequences are very hard to follow. He also photographs the majority of movie in ways that give the basic look of the movie a bland feeling, with nothing to capture the eye. But the screenplay has plenty of problems too. Would the U.S. military really enact a mission to North Korea without consulting the South Korean military/government first? And without taking any Korean soldiers with them for translation and other local problems that might come up? I'm no expert on the Korean situation or military procedures, but all the same this movie really insulted my intelligence.