Owen Wilson takes a break from his more usual comedy roles here, playing a naval reconnaissance pilot who's shot down over Bosnia after inadvertently filming evidence of war crimes. Gene Hackman is the maverick admiral who battles Nato caution to find his flyboy before the pursuing Serbs get their hands on him. Former commercials director John Moore proves a dab hand at the action stuff - the sequence where Wilson is shot down is thrilling, edge-of-the-seat cinema - but, pyrotechnics aside, the rest of film is less enthralling and comprises Wilson running, stopping, getting shot at, and then running again. This is hardly surprising with such a dull script and characters. Hackman's bad-tempered naval commander in particular is so two-dimensional, he'd disappear if he turned sideways. A shame really because, if the rest of Behind Enemy Lines matched up to the action scenes, we'd be talking four-star material here.

While flying a routine reconnaissance mission over Bosnia, fighter pilot Lt. Chris Burnett photographs something he wasn't supposed to see and gets shot down behind enemy lines, where he must outrun an army led by a ruthless Serbian general. With time running out and a deadly tracker on his trail, Burnett's commanding officer, Admiral Reigart, decides to risk his career and launch a renegade rescue mission to save his life.