Behind Enemy Lines: Columbia
Behind Enemy Lines: Columbia tries to take from the somewhat successful formula of Behind Enemy Lines and continue the same type of action thriller style and premise but continues to fall flat.
Film making 10/25
Cinematography 10/25
Audio 18/25
Bonus Features 18/25
Total 56/100
There are in my humble opinion two or maybe three reasons a movie will go straight to DVD instead of trying its luck at the theatres. One is the obvious and straight forward the audience for this movie is not large enough to warrant a try like Hannah Montana or other smaller budget films, series or animated features.
Disney has been notorious in releasing takeoffs from their hit animated films direct to DVD but for a film that has a regular budget this usually means not enough audience would even be interested in the film in the first place. I would think that having the first sequel to Behind Enemy Lines going direct to DVD would have been a hint that the premise is a bit tired and does not appeal to a large enough audience.
The sequel Behind Enemy Lines: Axis of Evil only had a few critic reviews and many viewer reviews rated it somewhere south of average and I cannot see how adding a story of drug manufacturers getting into trouble with a US Navy Seals team being much different. The story is here but Behind Enemy Lines: Columbia needed to have a real military advisor to help them with plausibility and just plain common sense.
Behind Enemy Lines: Columbia uses the old story of drug manufacturers and the influx of drugs into our country as the backdrop of how we are going to stop this for good or at least try. A US Navy SEALS Team is sent into Columbia to observe a meeting between Columbian Army officials and a drug faction but is ambushed.
The meeting is an ambush and the SEALS are blamed for the murders of troops from Columbia as well as the faction leaders so we have our SEALS not only behind enemy lines but being blamed for murder. The real culprits behind the attack are a renegade group of regular Columbian soldiers who are blaming their countries problems on the drug factions and how the regular Columbian Army has been infiltrated by the factions.
The splinter group that attacked the meeting is now out to blame the US and their SEALS team so they get to hit more of the drug factions as well as their own regular Army. The Navy SEALS team races to find out what is going on as well as vindicate themselves using their unique training.
Having been in the military I have a unique and not so unusual idea of what military training and general tactics are but most know at least something about the military in general. Anyone can watch this movie and tell a daylight sneak into a compound not using all sorts of high tech gadgets but actually trying to sneak several people inside to spy on a meeting would be risky and foolish.
Add to this the fact that the wide open compound has several guards who conveniently only hang around one side of the compound and you have a general guard free area for our top notch SEALS to infiltrate. Just when they get all the goods on the meeting our rebel faction inside the Columbian Army sneaks in behind the SEALS and captures or kills them.
Aside from the fact that we could have seen this all coming and using all the high tech gadgets the SEALS have at their disposal the story is just not plausible to send several men into a compound when one would have sufficed. Why send any in at all, go in the night before, plant a bug and listen from the security of home base or just a few hundred yards out.