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Black Hawk Down


A topic by: OpinionMaster, on Films & Cinema, Drama. Tags: Ewan McGregor, British Actors, Action Directors, Orlando Bloom, Ridley Scott, Action & Adventure, War & Military, War, Cinema, Black Hawk Down, Eric Bana, Josh Hartnett, British Directors, American Actors, Films.


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Category: Films & Cinema > Drama

Overall rating
Tags:

Ewan McGregor, British Actors, Action Directors, Orlando Bloom, Ridley Scott, Action & Adventure, War & Military, War, Cinema, Black Hawk Down, Eric Bana, Josh Hartnett, British Directors, American Actors, Films

Language: English
Added by:

OpinionMaster on 20/11/2006





 
 
 
 
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I'm Done!
 Fudgibo_UNSUBSCRIBED  
Another stonker by Ridley Scott - really liked it  is this feedback useful?
 
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by Fudgibo_UNSUBSCRIBED on 27/04/2008
Another stonker by Ridley Scott - really liked it. Visually striking and quite funny in places, despite the subject matter
 vicky831  
good  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by vicky831 on 24/10/2007
good
 ESPIN1  
A fantastic film  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by ESPIN1 on 23/10/2007
A fantastic film
 kaz7762  
GOOD  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by kaz7762 on 22/10/2007
GOOD
 anyawalsh  
Black Hawk Down  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by anyawalsh on 09/06/2007
Damn, this movie goes fast. One minute the soilders are having a meeting the next there getting there brains painted on car windows. Thats not really a good thing. This movie tries to be like Saving Private Ryan alittle bit. It tries to be exciting,greedy,shocking,emotional. But it's really not. There are some great,fantastic moments in this movie. But they are few and far between. Everything else is either boring, stupid, or just plain ridiculous. There are some scenes that try to be sad or emotional but turn out funny. Like the scene where one of the soilders has a seizure while watching T.V. or when another soilder dies because when he went to jump out of the helicopter he missed the rope(HOW THE HELL DO YOU MISS THE ROPE?). Another problem is you don't really get to know the soilders. So when they die, you feel sad. But not that sad. Plus the fact that every other word is f*ck. Then after those stupid scenes, there will be long periods of the soilders just running around and yelling at each other. And they make the natives look like zombies on crack. Overall, this movie has some respectable moments, but it burns and crashes very quickly.
 leinad1988  
incredible  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by leinad1988 on 07/06/2007
Black Hawk is quite simply the best movie of the year (2001) and the best war movie I have seen. It's an astonishing achievement that puts you right in the middle of the hellish horror faced by U.S. soldiers in Somalia in 1993. Every explosion startled me and filled me fear, every gunshot felt like it was whizzing right by me, every mistake or unforeseen event had me on the edge of my seat with stress and anger. I felt as though I had been transported to Mogadishu for 2.5 hours and plopped in the middle of the ambush faced by the 100 or so U.S. Rangers and Delta Force Troops as they set about to capture a Somalian warlord responsible for stealing Red Cross food shipments in his starvation-ravaged country. I really felt this movie, it was tangible to me; the confusion, the fear, the sense of dislocation and horror the soldiers must have faced. At the end I was emotionally and mentally drained.

Ahh emotions, a subject of much debate where this movie is concerned, at least among some critics. While the reviews for Black Hawk Down have on average ranged from "Good to Excellent," there has been persistent and growing criticism over the lack of clearly drawn out characters that the audience could connect with, the lack of historical context, and the fact that movie is all action, with no heart, with no point-of-view. Well I think those who criticize the movie on these grounds, have completely missed the point of the movie, and are flat-out wrong. It is a movie told from the soldiers point-of-view, pure and simple. This is not a political movie, this is not a movie that needs cheap sentimentality or conventional emotional "hooks" for the characters. As much as I liked Saving Private Ryan, the overly sentimental framing device used by Spielberg, really annoyed me. It felt like he was pandering to the audience just a little bit, and it wasn't necessary. Well, there's no pandering here, no cheap sentimentality in Black Hawk Down, just the horrible, gruesome, disorienting reality of modern combat. I didn't know anyone who worked in the World Trade Center, but I was moved to tears by what happened to them on Sept. 11 and that's the way I felt today in the movie.

As far as I am concerned there was plenty of emotion in Black Hawk Down, plenty of "choke-up" moments, or moments when I was moved by the unbelievable courage shown by the soldiers as they faced an almost hopeless situation. I'm not sure how anyone could not be moved by seeing these 18-25 year-old men trapped in the horror of a Civil War that had no bearing on U.S. National Security. As portrayed by the amazing ensemble cast, these men (really boys in many cases) showed the full range of emotions that our soldiers must have gone through, not to mention the fear and confusion of their situation. To me the cast standouts were Josh Hartnett (boy has he got BIG FUTURE STAR written all over him) as Staff Sgt Eversmann and Australian actor Eric Bana as Sgt 1st Class "Hoot."

Black Hawk Down is a great movie, and it is an important movie. It is the story of courage and heroism against nearly insurmountable odds. What happened in Somalia was a foreign policy failure for the U.S., but the actions of the soldiers sent into battle that October day were anything but failure. That there were not more casualties is a credit to them and ultimately a credit to all of us.
 DESINSC3695547_rmbiber  
Black Hawk Down  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by DESINSC3695547_rmbiber on 11/07/2007
The premise of Black Hawk Down, derived from Mark Bowden's book of the same name. As the movie unfolds, it becomes apparent that it cares less about the relative success or failure of the mission to capture the Somali warlords of Mohammed Farah Aideed, and more about the individual heroism of the US soldiers involved.
This political bias in favour of the American account of the Battle of Mogadishu largely came about because of Ridley Scott's dependency on the US Military for the loan of their hardware to make the film work. They were never going to exchange Black Hawk Helicopters for a negative or even less-than-glowing portrayal of the individual courage of their troops, as opposed to the running, screaming barbarity of an indigenous population, incensed at their presence, and hostile despite their best attempts to improve these people's lives, and we can see the DNA of the kind of insurgency warfare now typified by Iraq and Afghanistan, here on the dusty streets of Mogadishu. Even the commentaries by US soldiers who were there, featured on the voice-over soundtrack, exclusively praise the undeniable courage of the Rangers and Delta Force, and then go on to quantify the engagement as a 'battle' that was 'decisively won' by the Americans.
Technically, the film is superb, and Scott's use of lighting is extremely effective. A strong cast helps to add depth - clearly depicting the professionalism of soldiers who, while being out of their depth, cope magnificently with the situation. Anyone who considers joining the military should watch this - not as an overt means of dissuasion, but as an example of what may be expected of them when the malleable policy that supports them meets the inflexible will of their opponents.
 pufftat  
Black hawk down  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by pufftat on 19/03/2007
I loved full metal jacket for its new approach of hard hitting reality and its intense character breakdown and this film has alot of the same qualities. Instead of glorifying war and making the whole issue seem trivial and fantasy it gets to the heart of the issue and shows it for what it is. It tells the real story from the mens point and instead of padding the film out with a pointless love story or overdone special effect battle scenes it spends the time giving an in depth realistic overview of what our soldiers go through instead of the propaganda style films that most directors go for. The only down side for me is that in many ways we dont learn enough about the main characters and so when we are shown some of the harder hitting scenes it is harder to relate and feel compassionate. However overall this is definetly worth watching.
 michellev_77  
black hawk down  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by michellev_77 on 15/03/2007
I'm not a fan of war movies usually,but when i sat down to watch Black Hawk Down,i couldn't turn it off.Heres a war movie which doesn't sugar coat.There is no crappy dialogue,no soppy love story tie ins,just the real deal,brutal battle scenes,the gruesome reality of war.Black Hawk Down is based on a true story,the bloody battle at Somalia and it leaves one drained.Its confronting,and exposes war in its true light-there's nothing glamorous to see.In two hours and a bit the viewer is able to imagine being there at the horrible battleground,and suffering like the soldiers did.It really makes you appreciate how lucky we are to be in a free country,relatively peaceful,and not having our lives threatened every second of the day.Everything about BHD is right; the setting of the film,the Somalians,the American soldiers going through hell,the brutality,the battle,the

fatalities.Not for the faint hearted,or weak stomached,but a truly powerful,compelling motion picture.Ridley Scott takes the viewer on an imaginative journey through Black Hawk Down and appeals to our emotions.A brutal,yet bearable war film.
 madjock68  
DVD Review  is this feedback useful?
 
Author's rating
by madjock68 on 12/06/2007
Directed by Ridley Scott ("Gladiator," "Thelma & Louise," "Blade Runner," "Alien"), "Black Hawk Down" is an action movie that reenacts the real-life Battle of Mogadishu from the American point of view. This film is a fitting tribute to the brave men who fought that battle, in which 19 American soldiers and over 1,000 Somalis lost their lives. But while I found the action sequences exciting, they sometimes went on too long for me, and I was a little disappointed the movie didn't pack more of a dramatic punch. Still, I admired Scott's brilliance in telling the story visually, and I found "Black Hawk Down" well worth watching when I saw it recently on DVD.

"Black Hawk Down" chronicles a battle which took place in 1993 in the city of Mogadishu, the capital of the East African country of Somalia. For years the country had been in the throes of civil war, pitting rival clans headed by warlords against one another. The clans maintained their power by controlling arms and food, and 300,000 civilians had been starved to death.

When the United Nations could neither keep the peace nor adequately distribute food in Somalia, the United States sent in elite military forces. The Americans received intelligence of a meeting in Mogadishu that would be attended by two top lieutenants of Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the most powerful of the Somali warlords. Despite the fact that the meeting would take place inside an area controlled by Aidid, the American high command decided to conduct a daring raid to capture the two lieutenants.

On the afternoon of October 3, 1993, the Americans dispatched Army Rangers and Delta Force troops into Aidid's territory to capture the warlord's lieutenants. Scheduled to take less than an hour, the operation quickly went awry, and the American force of about 160 men found itself in a grim 16-hour firefight with thousands of members of Aidid's militia. The U.S. troops acquitted themselves exceptionally well by any standard, but the American public was deeply dismayed when they saw television footage of their dead soldiers being dragged down the street by Somalis. The result was that President Clinton withdrew the Delta Force and the Rangers from Somalia two weeks after the Battle of Mogadishu.

"Black Hawk Down" focuses rather narrowly on the Battle of Mogadishu itself without giving much historical or political context. But the story of the chaotic firefight is told well, and the film is loaded with impressive combat footage. The movie takes its title from the turning point of the battle, which occurs when Aidid's militia uses a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) to shoot down a Black Hawk helicopter. After that, the beleaguered Americans work together to save as many of their own as they can, and their effort is nothing less than heroic. Two American soldiers were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military award for bravery that can be given to any individual in the United States.

"Black Hawk Down" features a large ensemble cast, and I confess I had a hard time keeping track of the characters. Among the many actors in the movie are Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, William Fichtner, and Sam Shepard. There's a minimum of meaningful dialogue in the film, and the soldiers say things like "hoo-ah" (a phonetic rendering of the acronym for Heard, Understood, Acknowledged) and "roger that" a lot. When the movie was over, the only actors who stood out in my mind were Shepard as Major General Garrison, who was the operation's commanding officer, and Hartnett as Staff Sergeant Eversmann, who was put in charge of a Ranger chalk, which is apparently a unit of about a dozen men.

The "Black Hawk Down" DVD comes with disappointingly few extras: the only one worth mentioning is the 24-minute featurette titled "On the Set." Here you get to see some of the filming in Morocco and hear brief remarks by producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Ridley Scott, author Mark Bowden, and members of the cast and crew. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill making-of featurette, but there are still a few things in it worth watching.

I like "Black Hawk Down" and I do recommend it, but I can't help feeling that much more could have been done with the material, especially on the DVD version. I would certainly like to have heard a feature-length commentary by director Ridley Scott, and I would also like to have supplementary materials by military and political experts and historians to help me better interpret the significance of the Battle of Mogadishu. I expect that eventually a multi-disc special edition DVD version of the film will be released, and I hope it will shed more light on this tragic event.
  
 
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