Black Hawk Down Review
by Shannon Patrick Sullivan (shannon AT morgan DOT ucs DOT mun DOT ca)January 28th, 2002
BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001) / *** 1/2
Directed by Ridley Scott. Screenplay by Ken Nolan, based on the book by Mark Bowden. Starring Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore. Running time: 144 minutes. Rated R for extreme violence by the MFCB. Reviewed on January 27th, 2002.
By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN
Synopsis: On October 3rd, 1993, an elite force of American soldiers was sent into Mogadishu to capture what they believed were lieutenants of Somalian warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. They walked right into an ambush. A mission which was supposed to take an hour lasted for nearly a day, and left behind a trail of bodies both American and Somalian. Were it not for the tenacity and courage of the troops, however, the casualty rate could have been much higher.
Review: What almost everybody remembers about Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" is its first twenty minutes: a visceral, brutal, highly realistic portrayal of battle. In "Black Hawk Down", Scott has taken the premise of that opening salvo and spun it into an entire movie. This is a film which uncompromisingly portrays the violence of 1993 Somalia, and the audience doesn't escape the bloodshed until the soldiers themselves do. "Black Hawk Down" is unrelenting; once the fighting begins, it is almost without cessation. This is not conflict as viewed through Hollywood's rose-tinted camera lens: blood spurts, limbs shatter, civilians die, and the percussive beat of gunfire hardly ever vanishes from the soundtrack. At the same time, there is never the impression that Scott is glorying in or exaggerating the situation; this really is how things went down that day, and that is all the more horrifying. Unlike "Gladiator", Scott keeps the action mostly coherent, and only when he bounces back and forth between several similar scenes do things get at all confusing -- not helped by the fact that, once the blood and grime is caked on, his cast of predominantly young white actors is difficult to tell apart. "Black Hawk Down" is a classic illustration of the old adage that war is hell, and that soldiers often become heroes simply by surviving.
Copyright © 2002 Shannon Patrick Sullivan.
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