This time, however, Burnett spots some suspicious activity on the ground and decides to fly outside his authorized airspace to photograph it. Reigart is disappointed about the prospect of losing his best naval aviator, and as punishment, on Christmas Eve, he dispatches Burnett and a pilot, Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht), on the kind of routine, usually fruitless reconnaissance mission that Burnett has flown many times before. Burnett, who has served in the Navy for eight years without seeing any action, has reluctantly decided to leave military service out of sheer boredom and frustration. Reigart and Burnett have their own conflicts. The NATO commander, Admiral Piquet (Joaquim de Almeida), although sharing the same rank with Reigart, is technically his superior, and a subplot of the movie follows the personal power struggle between the two that has subtle global implications. ‘Drive My Car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”.‘Passing’: Set in the 1920s, the movie centers on two African American women, friends from childhood, who can and do present as white.

‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart stars as an anguished, rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s answer to “The Crown.”.‘Summer of Soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.Scott and Manohla Dargis, selected their favorite movies of the year. When the going gets tough, both are willing to risk their careers to defy authority.Īlthough the movie is basically a cut-and-dried thriller, it sends an implicit message that blind obedience to military command isn't always the best policy and that a judicious flouting of the rules is sometimes the nobler choice.

Carl Vinson, are seasoned military men, each with a renegade streak. Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson), a talented naval aviator, and his commander, Admiral Reigart (Gene Hackman), who leads the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Without excessive flag-waving or patriotic bluster, ''Behind Enemy Lines'' plays into the new spirit of gung-ho militancy that has swept the nation since Sept. Even with its occasional lapses into melodramatic fakery, its cool, machine-tooled mixture of jargon, gadgetry, offhanded machismo and war-is-hell imagery feels far more authentic than in most Hollywood war movies.

''Behind Enemy Lines,'' a taut wartime rescue thriller that sustains a relentless buzzing energy, feels very much of the moment, even though it is set in the Balkans and not in Afghanistan.ĭirected by John Moore, from a screenplay by David Veloz and Zak Penn, it provides about as intense an immersion in military ambience as a Hollywood movie could hope to provide in just over 90 minutes.

Movie behind enemy lines