Watch Behind Enemy Lines Online

The film's fictional plot is centered on the story of uncovering a massacre in the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 by an American naval aviator. Admiral Leslie Riegart's (Gene Hackman) carrier battle group is in the final stages of a NATO peacekeeping deployment when the F/A-18F Super Hornet of Chris Burnett, the aircraft's Weapons System Officer (Owen Wilson) and his pilot Jeremy Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht), launched from the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is shot down by a SA-13 SAM controlled by renegade Serbian forces led by General Miroslav Lokar (Olek Krupa) and his second in command Colonel Viktor Bazda. Lokar is committing a secret genocidal campaign against the Bosniak people in a no-fly zone that the NATO plane violates and photographs; wanting to avoid being discovered, Lokar has the plane shot down and executes Stackhouse while Burnett escapes to the countryside.

From then on Burnett is on the run, narrowly escaping from the Serb militia time after time. All the while he maintains contact with his Admiral, to lead him to a safe point for a rescue attempt. The resulting attempt to rescue the downed aviator is complicated by political considerations which are forced on Riegart by his NATO commanding officer Admiral Juan Miguel Piquet (Joaquim de Almeida), including using his own team for the extraction rather than the team that Riegart put together. Burnett is chased by Sasha (Vladimir Mashkov), a Serbian sniper and right hand man to Lokar. He escapes death after he slides off a dam while being shot at by Sasha. In another scene, he falls into a mass grave and hides under dead bodies. He makes his way to Hac, a small town in Bosnia on the back of a pickup with a group of fighters. The entire town is at an all out war. When Serbian forces attack the mall he and the fighters are hiding in, he manages to flee by disguising himself in a Serb militant outfit after dressing up a dead Serb militant in his pilot suit. He loses his radio in the attack. Bazda and Sasha pursue Burnett in the forest as Burnett attempts to make it to the safe zone where he will be rescued by helicopter. In the pursuit, Bazda steps on a mine and his ally Sasha leaves him to die. The situation intensifies when Serbs claim that the downed aviator was shot dead by Bosnian guerrillas, after they find their dead soldier in the pilot suit. The rescue attempt is called off as Burnett sees the helicopter fly away.

Finally, he manages to contact the carrier via a locater in his ejection seat. Upon learning that Burnett is alive, Riegart decides to immediately set out with his team to rescue Burnett, full knowing that he would lose his command for going in without authorization. Sasha tracks Burnett and waits for him to move when he hears the noise of a helicopter and he moves in for the kill. But Burnett emerges from the snow shooting and later stabbing him with a flare. Serbian M-84 tanks, BMP-1 armour vehicles and infantry surround Burnett. Then U.S Marines UH-1 Iroquois helicopters, with Riegart in the lead chopper, appear and fire on the Serbs. Near the helicopter Burnett turns back for the photographs of the massacre. Under a hail of bullets he retrieves the disk and is rescued. After the rescue he hands over the disc containing the photographic evidence to Riegart. This leads to Lokar's arrest. The film ends as Riegart is facing reassignment for superseding the chain of command, deciding instead to retire from the Navy.

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