TNMC

 I haven't seen camera work this shaky since The Blair Witch Project. At least that film had a good reason for that look. Here there is no excuse for camera work that looks to have been shot by someone in the midst of an epileptic fit. Usually hand held cameras are used to give the film the look of a documentary. It's a little touch to add some realism. In this film though, it just feels like the cameraman is a rank amateur.

The story is at best murky. The action has something to do with the Balkans toward the end of the conflict there recently. An American battlegroup in the Adriatic Sea seems to be in charge of patrolling the skies over the region, except they have their hands tied rather seriously. This raises questions as to what they are even doing there in the first place. No fly zones have been set up but for some reason they only seem to apply to the UN forces supposedly there to enforce the peace. Aren't no fly zones generally meant to keep the skies clear for those doing the enforcing? Here, the opposite seems to be true.

The US battlegroup is taking orders from a French admiral for unknown reasons. The American admiral, Reigart (Gene Hackman), seems to have little if any authority over anything other than the schedules of his crew. He mostly seems pre-occupied with trying to straighten out one of his fliers, navigator Burnett (Owen Wilson). To do this he gives Burnett and his pilot the worst possible slot on the schedule, a recon patrol on Christmas. The mission finds problems with its maps and Burnett, out of boredom I suppose, decides to head them into the no fly zone to take some pictures. They manage to capture Serb forces filling in mass graves. Being spotted annoys the Serbs so they shoot down the F-18. They track the downed men and execute the pilot while Burnett is looking for a spot to transmit a distress signal from.

Now Burnett has to hightail it to a set of coordinates designated for rescue. Meanwhile, the French admiral forbids a rescue mission for no apparent reason. So now Burnett has to vamoose the country entirely. Reigart gets to sit on his aircraft carrier and look grumpy at his inability to do anything useful. Burnett is chased by Serbs who might as well have been nameless because these are perhaps the most ill defined characters of the year. Until the credits rolled I had absolutely no idea what their names were. Their only motivation seems to be being evil simply for the sake of being evil.

There are some great looking elements to to this film that they tried very hard to obscure through editing. For instance, the US Marine gunships have a truly awesome presence, particularly when they start belching forth missiles and gunfire. Unfortunately we only get to see these things briefly as the film cuts rapid fire (sorry) between them, the hero, the enemy, a local statue, Ed McMahon and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Okay, maybe I made up the last two but in the frenzy of edits it's really hard to be sure.

The editing and vibro-cam are bad enough without an assist from a script that does nothing to distinguish itself. Wilson plays a cookie cutter reluctant hero. He's a bit of a rebel and a wise ass. He's not great with authority. But he's got a great moral center to stand up for what matters. Yawn. Been there, seen that. Hackman fares little better with an admiral whose sole job is to stomp around annoyed by how little he's allowed to do. Hackman might not have been acting. That could have been his genuine irritation at the limitations of the script.

The director does us no favors either, frequently punctuating the actions with flashbacks so that the particularly dimwitted amongst the audience don't get lost. Example: Burnett wants to find the film from his jet's camera so he can prove what they saw and his pilot wouldn't have died for nothing. This statement is followed by flashbacks to the mass grave in case you couldn't remember what happened 45 minutes ago. Or how about when Burnett discovers he won't be rescued and the camera circles his mountain top seat to punctuate that he's alone. Thank you Captain Obvious.

Frankly I'm baffled as to what either Wilson or Hackman are doing in this film. Both are far too talented to be associated with a film this dumbed down. It's a shame. There is a lot of interest to be said about the Balkan troubles but this film neatly side steps any of that in favor of a generic action flick.

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