Behind Enemy Lines

Bad acting, useless dialogue, formulaic script and implausible action sequences. If you enjoyed Rambo II, this is the movie for you. The ONLY redeeming quality is that it gave work to Filipino actors (playing Vietnamese...not very convincingly). It's unfortunate how so many Americans are still so totally hung up on the fact that they lost the Vietnam war that they need to keep creating this kind of crap just so that they can feel better through some pitiful consolation of watching scores of Vietnamese soldiers getting shot, beaten and "vanquished" by a couple of Americans. Which is why even the action sequences were bad. This film is really a low point.

This B action movie is shot with a bit more competence than other films in the genre. It also looks like it had a generous budget, or at least a lot of cooperation from the Philippine army, judging by the amount of gunfights, soldiers, Armored Personnel Carriers and explosions that feature throughout the film. The plot is the old "rescue my 'Nam buddy from the rank jungle prison he's being held in by the psychotic Communist general with thousands of troops under his command" premise. The good guys are invincible, the bad guys thoroughly expendable. You know what to expect. Sit back and let our boys win one for the Gipper. I must add in closing that Thomas Ian Griffith really is a good actor- I hope he gets cast in more mainstream films in the future.

I couldn't believe a movie could be so gawdawful, but it seems I'm wrong. Like you might be led to believe, this is one of those movies that have an old tired plot, lots of pointless action, and characters you could really care less about. It's as if the Movie God just decided to hunker down one day and pass this digested, festering turd of a movie in His great toilet and flush it into the sewers known as the "Straight to Video" market we harbor here on Earth. If you want to watch a great movie about Vietnam, try Apocalypse Now, it's brilliant. However, if you like this movie (!), try Platoon. It's got a larger budget and it's more well-known, but it's nearly just as stupid.

So there seems to be some debate about whether this is made-for-TV or a B movie. Well, it appears to have been made for the cinema but with writers and a director not used to producing B movie quality.

The two lead actors, Thomas Ian Griffith as Mike Weston, and Chris Mulkey as Jones, are competent, the minor ones less so. If the Vietnamese actors look like Philippinos, there is a reason for that! The camera-work is pretty good, though I could use less slo-mo, and the action scenes are frequent and watchable.

The main problem is the writing. The basic story is too stupid to be worth describing. The US military is portrayed as full of low-intellect young men who can't put a sentence together without profanity. I wondered if there was some irony there but I don't think so.

Sit back and enjoy the action, if you can?

The guy/gal who writes the teaser for Cinemax screwed up again. I was hoping to get a good laugh watch Owen Wilson pretend to be a Navy officer in Behind Enemy Lines (2001), but they screwed up and put this one on instead.

Instead of laughs, I get Thomas Ian Griffith (xXx, Vampires) as an ex soldier going back to rescue his buddy, who was supposed to be dead, and some nuclear triggers. He is, in turn, rescued by a bunch of Marine misfits that lounge around on his boat in Tahiti.

No, it's not Rambo II, Braddock: Missing in Action III, Uncommon Valor, or any one of a hundred other B movies that have a similar theme. If you have seen any of those, you have seen this one.