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Summary: Good intentions land soldiers in hell in "Black Hawk Down"
Review: The best equipped military in the world is not supposed to end up with soldiers being attacked by an angry mob in broad daylight.Yet that is just what happened in October, 1993, to the United States military's special forces stationed in Mogadishu, Somalia.
That day, hell erupted with the suddenness of machine guns fired into a crowd of starving Somalians who had lined up for bags of food. The road to this particular hell had been paved with all the best intentions. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis had been starving to death, a systematic strategy of warlords determined to take over. A horrified international United Nation force led by the US went in to distribute food and aid, but instead found themselves in the midst of a rabid, hate-fueled conflict between rival warlords. In an attempt to squelch the fiercest and bloodiest of them, US special forces staged a bold daylight raid on the warlord's headquarters. The goal was to capture two of the warlord's lieutenants in an effort to tighten the noose around him. However, what was to have been a 40-minute surgical strike into the heart of the warlord's stronghold in Mogadishu went tragically wrong, almost from the start. Botched communications, mishandled situations, untrustworthly local intelligence, and lukewarm support from alleged allies all contribute to the horrific result: Two Black Hawk Helicopters crash in the middle of hostile Mogadishu, and the few dozen ground troops left there find themselves surrounded by armed citizens who are storming down the streets by the hundreds, eager to kill US troops. The resulting firefight saw Americans in the bloodiest combat since the Vietnam war. Instead of 40 minutes, the fighting lasted a harrowing 22 hours.
We are spared nothing.
There is no unqualified happy ending here, no phony romance as in
Pearl Harbor to blunt the simple horror of bullet hitting bone. This movie is NOT for children.
The violence is incredibly graphic, yet appears quite realistic, not over-blown. We see how the best and the worst of people emerges in times of crisis, and how heros are sometimes people who just hand in there and keep doing their jobs. Although some of the events will bring tears to your eyes and ball up your fists, it isn't a depressing movie at all. If you don't already know the ending, (This IS a true story) I won't spoil it for you, but I kindly offer this advice: Get your beverages, snacks, walk the dog, turn on the phone message machine, and take a bathroom break before you pop in this DVD.
After it starts, you aren't going to want to stop watching until the end.
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Summary: Black Hawk Down
Review: If you want a good action movie, this one is for you.
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Summary: GROUND LEVEL EPITAPH for the FALLEN
Review: This engagement was really quite extensive, very complex and almost incomprehensible. This is a good film depicting what took place in this military action from the perspective of the soldier on the ground. The film's you-are-there point of view is its strength. To think that any Americans survived this action is mind bending. There are very good performances all around and excellent camera work that makes this a hard and gritty epitaph for those fallen. Somehow the reason why they fought seems unimportant. Paradoxically, what is important is the fact that they did fight and die with a certain dignity and courage that can only be found war.
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Summary: War is a racket
Review: A political racket. Nineteen American soldiers lost, and up to
10,000 Somalias (not 1,000 as is stated at the end of the movie), and for absolutely nothing. Let this movie be a message that the American military is for the defense of America alone, and not to play social worker for the Third World. This movie is brillliant, as most of Ridley Scott's movies are, but it is propaganda. I am not defending the Somalias, but what would we do if they invaded us? The same as they did when we invaded them. We're just not stupid enough to charge into advanced weaponry, as they did. Damn all politicians who send our soldiers into these situations. Let the Third World solve its own problems. We have enough of our own without taking on theirs.
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Summary: War is Chaotic: Our Reaction to It Must Not Be
Review: The presentation of war movies has over the decades changed from the early thirties and forties movies that focused on ethnic soldiers with clear personalities to more recent films which emphasize homogeneous soldiers who react collectively to a chaotic cauldron of gore. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN began the trend of dramatizing American GIs in mortal and graphic combat with an enemy that differed from them mostly in the color of uniform. BLACK HAWK DOWN continues the evolution of filming up-close combat against an enemy that is far less civilized than the Germans in 1944.
Most critics of BLACK HAWK DOWN describe the situation that led to the storming of the hotel that was supposed to contain Somali warlord Aidid. Director Jerry Bruckheimer faithfully records the tragic collapse of the mission that was to last no more than 30 minutes. Instead, the hundred or so Rangers and Delta Force soldiers found themselves fighting thousands of heavily armed Somali supporters of Aidid. The movie is replete with countless technical images of cinematic virtuosity that place the audience right there on the screen. Yet, as I watched BLACK HAWK DOWN for the second time, I tried to look beyond the experiences and viewpoints of the American soldiers, no mean feat there, since their actions against the Somalis and interactions with each other carried the viewer in lockstep with them. Instead, I paid attention to the native Somalis, most of whom formed a collective and faceless foe who reminded me of the way that the Japanese in World War II movies and the Vietnamese in the Vietnam conflict were portrayed. The Somalis were divided into two distinct groups: those street level thug types who did the fighting and dying and the upper echelon leaders who are etched as corrupt and evil betrayers of their own. Consider the parallel scenes of the American capture of a lower ranking Somali warlord at the beginning of the movie and the later capture of an American helicoptor pilot by hordes of crazed Somali militia. The captured Somali warlord was treated with respect and accorded unusual good care by his American captors. His response is to show his petty arrogance by blowing cigar smoke into the face of his interrogators. The captured American pilot is right away clubbed and mistreated before being released eleven days later. These twin scenes capture the film's subtext that the American concept of war and warmaking is not shared by the rest of the world. Our world of war is the Geneva convention. The rest of the world, as symbolized by the Somalis, is based on killing as negotiation. Massive losses do not deter them from killing us. Nineteen American deaths were quite sufficient for President Clinton to pull American forces out of Somalia. BLACK HAWK DOWN, then, serves to remind us that traditional American concepts such as the value of the life of one individual are not shared by many other cultures, and that in our haste and anger to lash out we must not forget that the film's oft repeated motto 'Leave no one behind' is all that keeps our sanity when confronted by such nonstop atrocities as our boys found that one day in Mogadishu.
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Summary: War Is Hell
Review: I saw this around the same time as a whole bunch of other war films, notably Windtalkers, We Were Soldiers, and Behind Enemy Lines and I can tell you that this is the best of the bunch.
Black Hawk Down chronicles the true story of a covert operation in Somalia gone terribly wrong. The story happened back in 1993 and has a sad ending unfourtunately with Bill Clinton giving the order to withdraw the troops from Somalia. Any soldier who was there I believe would agree that it would have been best to stay and finish the mission. It probably was viewed as a sign of defeat on our part in a way that we retreated. Please get this and experience what war really is. The one negative thing I do have to say about this is that it doesn't give as good of a background story on the characters as the book did, but nevertheless, it portrays war accurately. Not as something glamorous. It is our duty to honor those who fight or fought in the military.
War is hell, and in this it's accurately portrayed as such.
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Summary: Good War Movie
Review: Black Hawk Down is a good war movie. I think most people who appreciated this film had some previous knowledge of the event this film's based on. I saw a documentary on the event not long before I watched the movie and I can still remember seeing the bodies of the U.S. soldiers being dragged in the streets on the evening news. So I'm guessing that's why i didn't mind getting so little background as to why the operation took place, what they were doing there and so on during the film. The makers also could've tried a little harder to make us care more about each character. Other than that I think the film was very well done. The acting isn't as bad as some people have said. The performances are actually pretty good. Cinematography is nicely done too. Blackhawk Down supposedly goes into the most detail compared to any other movie portraying the modern military if you care about that sort of thing. As far as the DVD is concerned, I think they could've spent just a little bit more time on it. There's a trailers section as one of the special features options, but no trailers of Black Hawk Down. The dvd has a trailer of Spiderman and a trailer for The One, but none of Black Hawk Down. Also the text the DVD version uses as subtitles is kind of ugly. Those were the only problems I had with the DVD. The interface is nice and it has a nice making of the film documentary. It'll make a nice addition to the war movie catagory in your dvd collection.
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Summary: Loved it .......but
Review: As an ex-Australian soldier watching this film, I have to give it the usual critique of "American hype", however I've read the book by Mark Bowden, and have to say that as a soldier's story it is quite true and quite graphic. Australian soldiers were in Somalia at the time too as part of the UN peacekeeping force. I enjoyed the fact that it didn't deal with the political framework, as mentioned before it is first and foremost a soldiers story. As stated by Hoot (Eric Bana) near the end of the film; "it's about the man next to you". But I think the film could have done without the chest-beating by Josh Hartnett at the end. I was a little disappointed that the film did not depict the Somali riflemen, RPG men hiding behind, underneath, in a crowd of women and children as in the book; that's what these young soldiers had to deal with. Oh, and don't watch this if you're in any way squeamish.
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Summary: Would look great on SuperBit
Review: Black Hawk Down would be even better if it were to be released using SUPERBIT. Give us some Spanish dialogue and subtitles next time too.
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Summary: Best Picture of The Year
Review: I rented Black Hawk Down on dvd and the day after I bought it. It's a film about the horror and consequences of war. The film also sticks right to the book plot. Black Hawk Down is about a group of 100 American soldiers who landed in Mogadishu, Somalia to capture a warlord name Mohamed Fara Adid. The mission fails when two helicopters get shot down and crash. This film got jipped by A Beautiful Mind in the awards ceremony. It definetly should have won Best Director and Film. Black Hawk Down is an amazing story of courage under fire and modern war.
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