Behind Enemy Lines

During the final stages of the Bosnian War in 1995, U.S. Navy flight officer Lieutenant Chris Burnett and pilot Lieutenant Jeremy Stackhouse are stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Adriatic Sea. Fed up with the battle readiness routine, Burnett is preparing to leave the Navy and clashes with his commanding officer, Rear Admiral Leslie Reigart. On Christmas, Reigart assigns Burnett and Stackhouse to fly an aerial reconnaissance mission. During the mission, they spot unusual activity in the demilitarized zone. Burnett persuades Stackhouse to fly their F/A-18F Super Hornet off-course for a closer look, unaware that they are photographing Serb Volunteer Guard soldiers burying Bosniak civilians in mass graves. The local Bosnian Serb paramilitary commander, General Miroslav Lokar, is conducting a secret genocide against the Bosniak population and orders the jet to be shot down. Attempting to outmaneuver Lokar's surface-to-air missiles, Burnett and Stackhouse's jet is hit, forcing them to eject. Lokar and his men find Stackhouse, who is executed by Sasha Ivanic, Lokar's personal assassin. Watching nearby, Burnett gives away his position and flees into the wilderness, and Lokar orders his deputy, Colonel Bazda, and Sasha to hunt him down. Burnett radios for help and receives an extraction point from Reigart, who is forced to stand down after Admiral Piquet, the NATO naval forces commander of the region, warns him that rescuing Burnett in the demilitarized zone risks derailing the peace process. Spotting Bazda's patrol, Burnett falls into a mass grave and hides under the corpses until the Serbs move on. To ensure Burnett's rescue, Reigart leaks news of the downed jet to Sky News, angering Piquet. Lokar realizes that the jet's optical disc with the incriminating photographs may still be in the wreckage. Heading to the new extraction point, Burnett escapes Serb soldiers through a minefield. Pursued by Sasha, he encounters Bosniak guerrillas, who offer him a ride to the town of Hač, which Lokar's forces are battling to control. Amid the battle, Burnett's radio is destroyed, and Serb troops believe they have found his corpse, but Sasha recognizes that he switched uniforms with a dead Serb soldier and escaped. To buy more time to catch Burnett, Lokar presents the corpse wearing Burnett's uniform to the media with his head covered, convincing NATO forces that Burnett has been killed, and the mission to rescue him is aborted just as he reaches the extraction point. Realizing why the Serbs shot him down, Burnett sees an angel statue near where his ejection seat landed, and returns to find it. He reactivates the seat's rescue beacon, notifying his carrier group that he is still alive and alerting the Serbs to his location. Knowing he risks being relieved of command, Reigart prepares a Marine Force Reconnaissance task force to rescue Burnett, in defiance of Piquet's orders. Lokar sends Bazda and Sasha to kill Burnett and recover his body. On their way, Bazda steps on a landmine, and Sasha abandons him to his fate. The resulting explosion alerts Burnett. Sasha finds the ejection seat, but is ambushed by Burnett, who, despite taking a shot in the arm, fatally stabs him with the spike of a railroad flare. Lokar arrives with armored vehicles and infantry, but is held off by Reigart's task force. Retrieving the optical disc, Burnett is rescued, much to Lokar's dismay, as his crime is now being exposed. The photographs of the mass grave lead to Lokar's arrest and conviction for war crimes, including genocide. Reigart's actions result in his being relieved of command and his retirement from service, while Burnett continues his career in the Navy.