Behind Enemy Lines

The film's fictional plot is centered on a story of uncovering a massacre in the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 by an American airman.

Admiral Leslie Reigart's (Gene Hackman) carrier battle group is in the final stages of a NATO peace keeping deployment when the F/A-18F Super Hornet of Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson) and his pilot Jeremy Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht) is shot down by a SA-13 SAM controlled by renegade Serbian forces led by General Miroslav Lokar (Olek Krupa). 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 attack time after time. A Serb sniper and right hand man of Lokar, Sasha (Vladimir Mashkov) is sent to get rid of Burnett. Bazda steps on a mine and his ally Sasha leaves him to die. Burnett is chased by Sasha and escapes death after he slides off a dam while being shot at by Sasha. 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 with his pilot suit. He loses his radio in the attack. 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 are complicated by political considerations which are enforced on Reigart by his NATO commanding officer Admiral Juan Miguel Piquet (Joaquim de Almeida). 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.

Finally, he manages to contact the carrier via a locater in his ejection seat. The Serbian sniper 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 and stabs him. Then Serbian tanks, armour vehicles and infantry surround Burnett. Then U.S helicopters 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 Reigart.