YMMV / Behind Enemy Lines

• Cliché Storm:
  • Roger Ebert criticised the movie for "recylcling two of the biggest cliches of bad war movies. Cliche number one - the immature hot dog showoff turns into a hero when the chips are down. Cliche number two - the enemy can fire thousands of rounds of machine gun fire, rifle fire, tank fire and even missiles at the guy and never hit him, but when he fires back, well he never misses".
  • Richard Roeper made fun of its use of "the old switcheroo on the uniform" (though the trope does have a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome when the switch gets his first rescue called off).
• Complete Monster: General Miroslav Lokar is the warmongering commander of the Serb Volunteer Guard paramilitary unit, secretly orchestrating a series of genocidal killings against Bosniaks, including children, in southern Bosnia and burying the bodies in a mass grave at the hills. Destroying the jet of Chris Burnett and Jeremy Stackhouse when they accidentally photograph evidence of his crimes, Lokar executes the latter and sends his two Co-Dragons on a mission to hunt for Burnett. Leading an attack against the guerillas who opposed him, Lokar kills even more people and allows his soldiers to casually massacre surrendering troops.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The second film takes place in September 2004. If the Ryanggang explosion really was caused by a SEAL team sabotaging a North Korean nuke, it obviously didn't take as North Korea successfully tested a nuclear bomb in October 2006.
  • Even harsher: The movie was released on October 17, 2006. That was only eight days after the North tested their nuke for real.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Cold Sniper Sasha bears a strong resemblance to the protagonist Niko Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV. Both are also participants in the Yugoslav wars and are ethnic Serbs. Apparently Rockstar, the developer of the game, wanted Sasha's actor to play Niko, but it didn't work out.
  • Sasha Ivanic also inspired The Dragon Viktor Zakhaev from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, right down to the tracksuit.
• Questionable Casting: Owen Wilson, who usually plays the platonic ideal of a laid-back everyman, as a military action hero? This becomes less surprising when one considers that Wilson attended a military junior college, but whether that makes him believable in the role of an action hero is up to the individual viewer (though for what it's worth, his character isn't an experienced, battle-hardened badass from the get-go, but rather an "in the rear with the gear" flight officer forced into badassery when his plane is shot down).
• Strawman Has a Point: Admiral Piquet does have a point about American military interventions in the 1990s in that US forces, while useful for the raw power they are capable of projecting, were often too concerned about the potential of casualties to do anything productive (though one place American intervention may have been successful is the later (and aforementioned) intervention in Kosovo against Serbia).
• Tough Act to Follow: Many of Moore's films after this one didn't do well with critics (or audiences, mostly).

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