Black Hawk Down

Rating:
Summary: Unrelenting action and no time to catch a breath
Review: It happened in 1993, just a few short years ago. The United States sent troops to Somalia on a humanitarian mission because the people were starving. But something went wrong. There was bloodshed. American troops were killed. What happened? What went wrong? It was all very confusing.

This film, based on the book by journalist Mark Bowden is an account of the operation in which American soldiers were sent to the heart of the city of Mogadishu to capture two top officials of the ruling renegade warlord who were preventing fair food distribution. It was supposed to take a mere half hour. Instead it turned into a nightmare as one of their special helicopters, referred to as a "Black Hawk" was shot down.

Within minutes the audience is plunged into that nightmare and the tension keeps up for almost the entire film. Director Ridley Scott does a masterful job; I felt I was right there with the men, dodging bullets and caring for the wounded as a hostile mob of fully armed Somalians kept attacking. There were no name stars among the actors and, with one exception, they were all white young men in uniforms, and so it was easy to get them confused, especially since there was little, if any, back story. It was the battle itself that was the star of this film. The violence was strong and unrelenting, and there was no time for either the men or the audience to catch a breath before the next horrible thing happened. Special effects were awesome as the moment-by-moment action just kept going on and on.

There might have been no one central character to identify with, but that was not this film's intent. It forced me instead, to identify with it all. And it certainly made me think about how a battle like this can take place in a distant part of the world without more than a few news blips here at home about what was really going on.

One of the strengths of the film is that it doesn't preach. Both patriots and anti-war activists and the many people whose sentiments lie between these two positions can find something to relate to. It just tells the story about what happened that day. And that story is strong enough to stand by itself with no apologies.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Flick
Review: After reading the book a couple of years ago, I was extremely pleased to see this story turned into a movie. What's great about this flick is that it stays true to what happened.
Some people I have spoken to didn't like this movie, and in some respects, I can understand why. The movie is not a movie as such, rather a 'retelling' a 'recounting' of the sequence of events. There is no development of the characters, because there does not need to be. This is not a Hollywood 'blockbuster' in the traditional sense. It is a true story, and, as often occurs, reality is often more thrilling than fantasy. A female friend of mine took me to see this film, and its definitely not a 'chick flick'
No for the great stuff. This movie is packed full of military hardware, and phenomenal amounts of ammunition being fired left right and centre. From the moment Voodoo Chile kicks off with the Black Hawks and Little Birds lifting off, my skin gets goose bumps with excitement (ok, I am a little warped). As the gatling guns unleash hell upon the enemy, you get a perspective of what really went on. Yes, the carnage caused by the US special forces is awesome, but what truely comes out, the ultimate message of the movie, is the courage and determination of the men who fought, and died, risking all to ensure that no-one gets left behind, and that is what truely seperates these soldiers. One of the coolest flicks of all times, I saw it three times at the movies. Absolutely brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: Please, spare us from politics
Review: ...I'll be one of the first to give readers a review that has nothing to do with my political orientation:
It is a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat, it thrills you, scares you, and puts you through a whole wide range of emotions like an excellent movie should. The actors are believable, the special effects are awesome, and the plot stimulates your mind. You pull for the heroes, and want the villains to meet destruction (unless you sympathize with Somalians who shoot at people with rocket launchers). If people let go of their critical analysis of the time period, and just enjoy the movie, I think anyone will love it.

Rating:
Summary: i love this movie
Review: Black hawk down is down right awesome. Ridley Scott delivers another action packed and disturbingly entertaining movie about the incident in Somalia in 1993. Very detailed and accurate, Black Hawk Down is very realistic and full of wonderful cast members. Jamie Mead is right next to me. I love this movie and so will you.

Rating:
Summary: good war movie
Review: one of the better war movies out there,good graphic's.

Rating:
Summary: "Black Hawk Down" is a very difficult movie to watch
Review: Black Hawk Down is a difficult movie to watch. That's my profound statement of the century.
From the first few minutes, you see that the director is trying to get us to focus on the atrocities that are being committed--the 300,000 people who have died--that's the reason for this mission. It helps to give some perspective.

I've heard a lot of criticism for the fact that every soldier looks the same in this movie. They really do seem to blend together, it's hard to distinguish one from the other. I noticed that, but it didn't bother me...actually, it made me think. We, the moviegoers on the outside, can't really tell them apart...but they can. The men who are fighting together knew everyone's name--we're the ones on the outside, peeking into their world, trying to understand what they're doing. It was refreshing to me that this movie didn't feature face shots of the "heroes" with dramatic music playing in the background. I suspect that if we were able to watch the actual battle while it was going on, it would be hard to tell the men apart. This wasn't a weakness of the movie, it was a strength. It made things seem real.

Another problem that people see with the movie is that there is so little character development. I've been watching war movies all my life,and so I know what they're talking about. Gone are the long, dramatic dialogues between the characters where they tell each other their life stories. I got a sense that these men knew each other--and their interaction together in the first thirty minutes of this movie doesn't seem like it's contrived to make me feel connected to the characters...and for that very reason, I DID feel connected to them. They didn't seem like movie characters. They seemed real. What you see in the first thirty minutes or so is men eating together, talking about the little things people talk about, preparing to go out and do what they came here to do--capture some men on a mission that's supposed to take an hour. That's why the events that follow hit so hard--there's a real sense of seeing real people thrown into the middle of chaos and insanity, because you've already convinced yourself that these people are real.

I've heard that the explosions are too big, that they're unrealistic. Ok. They might be. I suspect the director had a desire to make this movie visually stunning. But what I noticed was that during every explosion, you can see people RIGHT THERE--and so you never lose sight of the fact that the explosions aren't the central focus here--it's the men fighting for their lives.

Some have said that this movie wasn't historically accurate. The events didn't occur as portrayed in the movie. Well, as I said before, I'm a movie geek. And so I'm used to this. No movie can be really accurate, because you're trying to recreate events. There were no cameras there in real life--so the very medium of film fictionalizes events. Even if the men who originally went on this mission were to reinact it, it wouldn't be accurate to the way it was back when it first happened. You can't recapture events that way. The best you can do is get some actors together, work until you've got little details down (and I've heard that it's very accurate in that way, right down to the hand signals used) and then try to do the best you can to make it seem real. And they've done this. I've seen forty-year-old men sitting next to me bawling during this movie. It hits, and it hits hard. If it's not what actually happened at that time, then it sure looks like something that could really happen--because it looks real.

There's a line in the film where one of the soldiers says, "People don't understand...it's all about the man next to you. that'sit." Yeah, you're right. I don't understand. I suspect that I'm not alone. But I've heard that Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends" and it was powerful to see people putting that into practice.

Finally, there's a line where a soldier is dying, and he says "tell my parents" and here I'm going, "Tell my mom I love her!" I've heard it a million times before. Even if it's something that people actually say, it's so contrived that I feel unmoved by it now. But he said, "Tell my parents that I fought hard today. Tell them I fought well." There are things I will never understand. I don't know what I feel so strongly about that I would be willing to die for it, but this guy believed in this mission. the most important thing to him was for his parents to know that he fought well. I know that it'sa just something a character in a movie said, but it really made me think...regardless of how I feel, I have to respect that someone could feel so strongly aboiut their country that they are willing to die fighting...that's powerful. And the fact that even when the soldiers were dead, they still sent others in to rescue them. They really meant it when they said, "Leave no man behind."

No joke, no kidding, no exaggeration: This movie changed my life. There are some things that I will never see the same way again. And for that, I have to respect this movie. After all, it's not often that you can say such a thing, is it?

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie, Great Men
Review: While this movie was indeed a great war picture, it is important to understand the backdrop of how we got their. Our involvement may have started under GH Bush...but at that time it was a US-led international relief effort. While both presidents did want to scale down American involvement, Cinton made the mistake of turning over American involvement to the UN...under UNOSOM II. This new UN-led role expanded the original mandate from a "relief" effort to a "nation building" effort. From that point on, US troops were basically under the control of UN decisions as Clinton acquiesed (sp) his role as Commander and Chief. This didn't mean that he couldn't unilaterally do what he thought was best for US troops...he just chose not to. This was evident when requests for heavy vehicle support was also denied so we wouldn't "appear" aggressive. If you're going to put US soldiers in harms way, you have to give them every means to defend themselves...regardless of appearances. And that is where Clinton and Aspin were wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Definatly A Worthy Movie
Review: This is cartainly the best war film I have seen since Saving Private Ryan or The Patriot. I just read a review by someone who said that the plot was unrealistic and that the characters were too "made up". Well, that person should realize that these events ACTUALLY HAPPENED and that the movie is based on Mark Bowden's book of the same name. The book contains most all of the facts from the actual event. The actions taken by such men as Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon (the Delta Force operators who single handedly went in on a suicide mission to defend downed chopper pilot Mike Durand) were real events, but some people fail to recognize this and dismiss their heroic actions as stupid. If you truly want to appreciate what a brilliant job Ridley Scott did, than I would highly suggest reading the book first. Ignorant people, like that reviewer, make me sick because they don't know that this story really took place on October 3, 1993, and that a lot of our guys actually fought and died over there. The fact that they had some of the men who actually fought in the battle as consultants on the movie shows their true intention to keep the movie as "real" as possible. The graphic combat depictions are terrifying and the plot exposition gives you just enough to know what is going on. The ensemble cast did a brilliant job showing the fear and helplessness that some of the men felt, while at the same time showing the brave and selfelss acts that the men realized that they needed to do to survive. The movie could have easily taken over three hours to show everything that happened, but Scott keeps it down to just over two hours. The point that I really want to make is that everyone should see this movie to truly appreciate the sacrifice that our Special Forces (the Army Rangers and the Delta Force) made in Somalia.

The only flaw in this movie is that they don't point out which character is which as much as they should.

Rating:
Summary: Read the Book!
Review: Although this was not a bad "action" movie, it was a very poor translation of a book that was a fairly accurate look at a conflict that was barely noticed by most people. Everybody can recall the images of dead Americans being desecrated by the Somalis, but what the book covered was the story behind the conflict, and it's participants. What I didn't like about the movie was the combining of some characters, and the omission or downplaying of others. I didn't get a feel for any of the characters in the movie. They all seemed very thin, whereas the book fleshes them out quite a bit more. Also, the tension between the different units stationed in Somalia, not there at all. In all fairness, had the movie mirrored the book, it would have been about as long as the battle itself, with hundreds of characters, and a cast of thousands. Bravo for making an almost honest movie about an unpopular conflict, but as for me, I'd like it a little more like the book.

Rating:
Summary: A great sounding non-DTS DVD.
Review: Of course the movie was great. But those with home theaters would wish it was available in DTS. No worry, the audio is great. The sound effects has an almost Saving Private Ryan effect.

The special features though is where the DVD comes short.