It takes place in 1993 in Somalia. It shows how a mission to capture a warlord and his highest ranking advisors in the Bakara Market of Mogadishu went from a planned 30 minute excusion to a huge 12 hour (I'm pretty sure it's twelve hours but don't hold me to this) massacre of the American troops involved.
The first thing I can think to say is there's alot of bloodshed..and this is an undstatement..it's more like there's ALWAYS bloodshed...but none of it seem unnessary. (Even though I was cringing most of the time I only closed my eyes for one medic sceen [SPOILER - highlight to read]: and it was where they were pulling a retracted artery out of a guy's hip..lot of squishing sounds and screaming, I can tell ya)
This was ALOT of movie to take in.. It's basically over 2 hours of action that's in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. It's so chaotic that I ended up being overwhelmed. Not that this is a bad thing..I think it really brought home the feeling of what it was like to be there. The move mainly tells the story of Chalk 4 and their role, how they were split up and Seg. Evenston's (think that's his name) concern for his men. Honestly though..I'd have to say that the movie really has a large large ensemble cast. We really follow maybe 15 people and it's so chaotic that I can't even tell you most of their names. Despite this I think you can appreciate the depth of the characters and what they went though.
It's one of my favorite war movies to date..and I'm not big on war movies.... They should repackage it and distribute it to people who want to go into the military with the name "So You Want to Join the Marines"..
Cool.
Been waiting for your review for a long time.
What would you give it on a scale form 1-10??
I have said that this movie is going to rock! I have been waiting for 1 1/2 year now! Cant wait to see it!
Sorry to play Devil's Advocate here... and printing other reviews may seem a bit cheap... but as just about every other film around here has been criticised I think it is only fair for at least one negative review to be posted about BHD- especially as there have been so many.
And please, no more hasty remarks about critics- they are just like you and I, people with opinions.
This is Tim Robbins review in today's Daily Telegraph.
"The great war films are difficult to watch but impossible to take your eyes off; they make you flinch and they makemyou feel. Ridley Scott's relentless, pounding reconstruction of combat on the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 fails so fundamentally on the latter task that all you want to do is look away- or leave. It has the pointless verisimillitude of an expensively rendered computer simulation, and this is what makes it almost the opposite of what Scott wants it to be. It's the war film as anaesthetic.
"Scott also wants it to be a memorial of sorts to the 18 soldiers who lost their lives when an American peaceleeping operation in Somalia went horribly wrong. He tackls on a footnote to say, by the way, more than 1000 Somalis also died- a truly damning index of his film's priorities. We dome out with no concrete sense of what the Americans were actually doing in Somalia, and no sense at all of what the disaster meant in the context of US ground intervention in the Nineties.
"Sense, in general, fights a losing battle with sensation. Tye soldiers are barely distinguished, and they're played by barely distinguishable young actors, their stubbled jawlines lit just so, as they run through the rubble. Ewan McGregor lifts things slightly with his affable chancer routine, but Josh Harnett, caked in leftover grime from Pearl Harbour, just looks in need of a long, hot bath.
"None of this would matter so much if Scott had simply managed to narrate it for us how it was that things went from bad to worse for the Americans. He hasn't. When their first helicopter goes down, it does so in a twisting fury of steel and sand, but when the second does- surely an appalling frying-pan-into-the-fire moment- it's just a blip on the strategic monitor."
"The partnership here with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who has never met a rocket-propelled grenade he doesn't like, has brought out the worst in this director: he applies music like icing, and stuffs every frame with so much texture that the effet is like wading through porridge. Right from the opening spectacle of Somalis shuffling photogenically through the heat haze, accompanied by standard-issue ethnic chanting, Black Hawk Down's sole philosophy seems to be that there's no kill like overkill."
Not my opinion, folks, I haven't seen it. I just thought a negative one was due.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Funny thing is...that's exactly how it made me feel..
Personally I think Mr. Robbin's (idiotically enough) didn't get the point of the movie at all..what made this film work so well (IMO) was that it wasn't the stardard movie with a little shooting here and a little shooting there.. but that there was shooting and fire and action though the whole thing..and that seems much more true to life to me. I mean come on...that's what happens, people are trying to kill you! They don't let up.
Scott captured how chaotic the whole situation became..which seemed to be exactly the very thing he wanted to do.
Saw it last night and the cinema was packed! Great film, lots of action and a couple of weepy bits to boot. Mrs.MM also couldn't watch that bit Dim and I was more than happy for her to cuddle up to me.
KMC Community Forums
Jan 17th, 2002 03:11 PM
