Editor’s note: Rip staffers Daniel F. Hunt and Todd E. Swenson speak candidly about “Behind Enemy Lines,” a new movie in theaters. This commentary piece contains profanity and adult content.
Daniel Hunt: “Todd, I make no bones about it. I really think this movie kicked ass. Not because it was intellectually superior to those movies that I usually like but just the action sequence; those action sequences made me feel proud to be an American taxpayer. See those million dollar jets being blow out of the sky”
Todd Swenson: “Billion dollars.”
Daniel: “That’s right.”
Todd: “Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the action sequences myself. Let’s recap the events of the movie.”
Daniel: “OK. Chris Burnett, played by Owen Wilson, is mad because he can’t fly his plane and blow up shit all the time.”
Todd: “Burnett, played the navigator. He didn’t even fly the plane.”
Daniel: “Why does he keep saying he wants to fly?”
(silence)
Daniel: “So, they get assigned to fly over Bosnia during Christmas Eve. The only plane on that day.”
Todd: “The only day, according to him, when the food is good on the ship.”
Daniel: “Right. The USS Carl Vinson. And then they get blown out of the sky.”
Todd: “Wait a minute. Back it up. The reason they got shot out of the sky was because Burnett saw something with his ‘shiny new digital camera.’ It came up on his computer that there was some activity in the …”
Daniel: “Demilitarized zone.”
Todd: “Right. The De —”
Daniel: “Demilitarized.”
Todd: “I hope you can spell that. Anyway, some came up on the computer. And he directed his pilot to fly that way. And they saw something. ”
Daniel: “With their ‘shiny new digital camera.’ ”
Todd: “And they are off-course and the enemy sees that and shoots them out of the sky with two surface-to-air missiles.”
Daniel: “SAM for short. So they are going down and they eject.”
Todd: “What was the pilot’s name?”
Daniel: “What the (expletive).”
Todd: “Gabriel Machk … his character’s name was Stackhouse. And when they landed he broke his leg and he couldn’t move. And Burnett went to find a place on a mountaintop to get a clear radio signal. And he was a half-mile away when he saw that Stackhouse was surrounded by Serbian troops and … ”
Daniel: “And then they shot the pilot. And Burnett yelled ‘No,’ and then the guy that shot the other guy, what was his name?”
Todd: “Hold on you’re confusing me. The Serbian guerrilla dude his name was Lokar.”
Daniel: “He was a crazy dude. He looked like the guy from Radiohead. I was waiting for him to break out into to rendition of ‘Karma Police.’ OK … I don’t want to give away the movie. So he’s running from the Radiohead guy, but back on the ship there’s a whole lot of internal struggle because they can’t just go and get him. The NATO guy, played by some Portuguese dude is being a major ass and saying ‘No, this will hurt the peace process.’ ”
Todd: “They didn’t really reveal it in the movie but the NATO guy and the evil Serbian army were in cahoots. If you pay attention you notice. But I can’t say enough about the action sequences. They were well thought out photography and direction.”
Daniel: “That was cool.”
Todd: “I’d love to fly one of those planes. ”
Daniel: “I’d wet my pants if I got to fly one of those things.”
(Daniel begins making sound effects of planes flying by.)
Todd: “Nice sound effects.”
Daniel: “Owen Wilson — he played a pretty good role. I’ve never seen him in a lead role before.”
Todd: ” ‘Shanghai Noon’?”
Daniel: “A decent leading role.”
Todd: “Oh.”
Daniel: “His broken nose. I don’t understand that.”
Todd: “Yeah, most guys with broken noses would go get it fixed, I’d think. We’re talking it’s really (expletive) up here.”
Daniel: “Does he seem dimwitted?”
Todd: “I think he plays off on that. I think that’s who he was before he was an actor.”
Daniel: “Gene Hackman. Can I talk about Gene Hackman?”
Todd: “That guy is cool.”
Daniel: “That guy is a goddamn pimp. He’s in fifteen movies this (year). ‘Royal Tennebaums,’ ‘Heist,’ I saw him on Skina — I mean Cinemax. He’s everywhere. He had a basketball tournament a few weekends ago. It was called the Gene Hackman Rice Invitational. The guy is a pimp.”
Todd: “He’s a damn good actor.”
Daniel: “His shit is the bomb. He probably gets hos left and right. Twenty-year-olds are like ‘Gene Hackman, I want your nuts.’ ”
(Laughing. A long pause and more laughing.)
Daniel: “I don’t know, it seems like the storyline was spongy. The movie was only an hour and 45 minutes. That’s like a made-for-TV movie.”
Todd: “With commercials, that’d be two and a half hours long. I agree that there could have been some better things.”
Daniel: “The sniper-guerrilla guy … they didn’t develop that character. For all I knew he was some (expletive) nut with a gun.”
Todd: “Other than that, I thought it was a good movie. Except one thing: The subtitles. I hate subtitles. If I want subtitles, I’ll go watch ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.’ I hate subtitles.”
Daniel: “Me too, I hate them with an unwielding passion.”
Todd: “All in all though, I liked this movie. This movie was good. I give it four and a half stars.”
Daniel: “Let’s be frank for a moment. After the tragedy of Sept. 11, these sort of movies make me feel good to be American. I feel good that I pay for the best military in the world. I’m glad we go over to other countries and we have the ability to beat the mother (expletive) shit out of them. This is what the nation needed. A good ass-kicking movie. And I say God bless America.”
Todd: “Well said.”
Daniel: “I give it four and a half as well.”