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Black Hawk Down

Black Hawk Down

List Price: $19.94
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great
Review: It was one of the best moviesv i've ever seen. I recomend it highly

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Surprising
Review: When i walked into the theater, I expected to see a bloody and gory war drama that I would not recover from for the rest of the day. Though the movie was very war related, I was surprised by the sense it gave the audience, proving that this is war and fighting. I would recomend this movie to anyone over 13 (there was still blood), and any Josh Hartnett fans.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: NON-STOP Action!
Review: This an excellent movie. The choreography and cinematography were excellent! Ridley Scott is at the top of his directing skills in this awesome action film. All the actors delivered excellent perfomances, and the movie was plain out awesome! It has the real-life look of Saving Private Ryan. Top reccomendations!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Gung-Ho Nightmare!
Review: Here we have another action adventure from the producer of many a gung-ho movie Jerry Bruckheimer.This time he enlists the help of one of my favourite directors Ridley Scott and I have to say this film is beautifully shot.The action sequences are truly amazing-the best he's done yet.You feel like you're right in the middle of this horrific gun fight,with bullets sounds ricocheting all around you.The sound is truly awesome and almost frightening at times.Some of the scenes are really gruesome and though it must be impossible to truly empathise with the real partcipants-the film makes it seem as realistic as any movie could possibly do.The acting is fine and the dialogue isn't quite as anal as you get in many war movies.There are so many characters however in this film that no truly strong ones emerge from the movie.I suppose the most unusual and probably most memorable one would be Ewan McGregor's and that's only because he farcically grinds and makes his own coffee in the middle of this savage battle for survival.

The film is based around a raid that went horribly wrong for the U.S. rangers in Mogadishu in the mid-90's.Set in a country that had been ravaged by civil war and then famine,the rangers go in to seize a warlord and bring him to justice.They seeem to underestimate the ferocity of the opposition and to make matters worse one simple accident plunges the rangers into a catalogue of nightmare proportions.At this stage we're are all well aware of Hollywood distorting history so it comes as no surprise that this movie should be no different.But sentiment behind this movie I find really shocking and pretty disturbing.Basically it's just the black and white portrayal of the two protagonists that I find amazing.One side is perceived as totally heroic,gallant,etc.Where the Somali's are protrayed as evil monsters.You get great feelings of grief suffered at the loss of life when it's a ranger and rightly so.But the deaths on the other side make it all feel like you're behind the controls on a video game shoot em' up.The last time I saw Africans portrayed in such a callous and brutal matter was in the movie "Zulu"-and that movie was made over 30 years ago!I thought at this stage that films have grown beyond the attitude of 1 western life equals 100 third world lives.Only once is their a brief glimpse into the misery all this violence has on a Somali-when a man carries the body of a child.You also never see the killing of many unarmed women and children(inflicted by both sides as the innocent got caught up in the terrible struugle for survival) that was well-documented and was surely inevitable in this particular nightmare.When you spend millions of dollars on a movie maybe it would be worth their while to take time into actually protraying people accurately.Anybody whose spent even the shortest of times in a muslim city will know that the whole place doesn't come to a complete standstill when the evening muezzin call is heard from the mosque.In this movie we have a raging battle and then the streets suddenly become deserted-I mean it's a farce!I love action movies and if this movie had maybe not been based on actual events it may have been more enjoyable.But I just spent my time getting more and more exasperated by the two-sided portayal of each side....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very Good, but Not Great
Review: It's a war movie. It's historically correct. It takes poetic license. It's gritty and real. It's a fantasy on film. It's the penultimate action film. And, it's been raking in enormous amounts of money at the box office.

Black Hawk Down, a big-budget thrill-ride from director Ridley Scott (Gladiator), went into wide release after it barely squeaked into the 2001 year in New York and L.A. The action follows a handful of characters, none of whom are developed beyond the basics (they're soldiers doing their job), who are all on the UN Peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Some are Army Rangers, the others are Delta Force troops. On a simple operation to capture some of warlord Mohammed Aidid's henchmen, things start to go badly for the troops and for the next two hours, the audience is treated to Scott's signature brand of non-stop action as the soldiers attempt to fight their way back to the UN base.

Black Hawk Down has been getting massive critical acclaim from viewers, whom I am willing to bet are more than happy to see American soldiers tear into people who blindly follow some whacko named Mohammed with miniguns attached to helicopters, pureeing the hapless bastards. Of course, those hapless bastards want to kill the Americans because someone got it in their heads that all the humanitarian aid (read: food) that the world was sending to Somalia should actually make its way to the people and not into Aidid's hands.

So these are the two conflicting camps: the self-righteous "America should help the helpless" camp, and the even more self-righteous "America should keep its hands to itself" camp. The third camp, who wouldn't mind watching the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of dark-skinned people named Mohammed, are apparently the ones going to see this movie. As the historical placard announces at the end of the film, Americans lost 19 men in this mission, and there were over 1000 Somalis who died at our soldiers' hands. Yes, they wished our soldiers harm. Yes, they were shooting at our soldiers. But, somehow, I don't think killing on such a massive scale is war - although I'm sure General Patton would disagree.

Regardless of the ethical implications, Black Hawk Down is still a darn good war movie. It's easily on par with Saving Private Ryan, although I would hesitate to rank it with other recent-conflict fare such as Three Kings. It suffers from lack of character development, as you really don't feel for the Americans who die other than that they are Americans, and it's action sequences aren't nearly as violent or thrilling as advertised. In short, it's not the original, be-all-end-all war film folks made it out to be. In the post-September-11th world, expect more of this kind of American Sunshine, but please don't just roll over and take it in suppository form just because it's patriotic - at least demand that it be good, if we're going to call it good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A must see!
Review: For anyone that wants to know what happend in Somlia and doesn't know, should go and see this film. Riddley Scott does what possibly no other could do, unless it was told by a present soldier; tell a war story with heartfelt conviction. In a time with so much heartbeack for 9/11/01 some would say that right now isn't the best time to see a film like this. I say for the eighteen that lost their lives let us never forget.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best war movie I've seen
Review: This is flat out the best movie about war that I have seen. Ridley Scott does an exceptional job of capturing the reality of combat. Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, and the rest of the cast fit their roles perfectly. They do not play extraordinary individuals, but soldiers who selflessly rise to the call of duty. Cinematographer Slavomir Idziak deserves lots of kudos, because I think this is the first film that has recreated the fog of war. Yes, the violence is graphic, but each of those bloody injuries on the screen is based on a wound received by an American soldier in 1993. They gave their all, and this film is an outstanding tribute to their courage in the face of incredible adversity

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great movie.
Review: I thought that this movie was a great representation of a war. Black Hawk Down was a very graphic movie, but it showed what war really is about. It truly makes you think. Josh Hartnett gives an Oscar winning role, so, hopefully he'll be nominated and win.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Black Hawk Down
Review: I was among only a handful of women in a packed theatre in Moraga, California last Friday night which was the first night of the Northern California release of this fine film. We all were obviously involved in all the action sequences. There was a respectful silence as we read the last remarks of the film. No, this was not a "message" movie but the clear message to me was that young boys are the ones who are as always doing the dirty work while the old guys are in helicopters far above the danger or back at base in a war room. This is excellent even for us moms.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: they didn't screw it up
Review: blackhawk down was a tremendous book, and i was very worried that it would be a disaster of a movie (too much cheese, leaving out the reality, bad acting, etc.)
i was wrong...check it out!


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