Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia

I wasn’t expecting much from this direct-to-DVD action movie, but it turned out to be fairly entertaining. It’s the story of a Navy SEAL team sent into the jungles of Colombia on a recon mission as a favor to the Colombian government because of a tip that Colombian insurgents are up to something big and no good. When they get there, they find themselves in the middle of a whole series of double- and triple-crosses. There’s an abundance of running and shooting, the occasional knife fight, and lots of stuff blows up real good. It all plays like a slightly bigger budget episode of THE UNIT, minus the soap opera stuff back home but complete with the gruff, bend-the-rules colonel in the control center running things. The leads are Joe Manganiello (also known as “Hey, it’s that guy who used to be on ONE TREE HILL. You know, he played Brooke’s boyfriend for, like, half a season.”) and somebody from the WWE who’s billed as Mr. Kennedy (a.k.a. “Who?” “I dunno, I can’t keep up with any o’ them rasslers since The Rock left.”)

Snarky comments aside, Manganiello and Kennedy both make pretty solid action heroes and turn in decent performances. The production values are good, the action scenes are edited so that you can tell what’s happening most of the time, and the script at least tries to throw in a few plot twists, although you’ll probably see most of them coming. The movie is only an hour and a half and seemed to move even faster, and I enjoyed it. If you’re action/adventure fan, I think it’s worth watching.