Black Hawk Down

I want to preface this by saying this: I don't like war movies. It isn't the violence that really bothers me; I just can't get into them. So anything negative I have to say about Black Hawk Down can probably be chalked up to that. I'm sure it really is a fine film.

Black Hawk Down tells the story of the American special forces soldiers who fought in Somalia. What started out as a quick mission to grab some high-ranking members of a Somalian militia went sideways after a helicopter was shot down. This lead to a number of American soldiers being killed and their bodies dragged through the streets for the entire world to see. What was supposed to be a quick mission turned into an all day battle. Black Hawk Down chronicles the heroism that the members of the Delta squads and Ranger teams showed (although it minimizes the heroism of the Pakistani and Malaysian troops who, along with the10th Mountain Division soldiers, eventually went into the city as well to rescue the pinned-down soldiers. In addition to many wounded, seventeen Delta and Ranger soldiers died as well as two 10th Mountain Division soldiers and one Pakistani and one Malaysian soldier.)

My biggest problem with the movie was that it was so tedious. Of course, that was probably the point; it was more than tedious for the men involved. But this kind of movie just does not resonate with me. Of the 2 hours and 24 minutes of the movie, I would guess close to 2 hours of it involve constant gunfire. At some point, I just kind of get numb to all the shooting and wish that something would happen or the movie would end. In addition, all the guys look pretty much the same in their combat gear. It just ends up (to me at least) being a movie of a bunch of nameless guys fighting a bunch of other nameless guys. I just had trouble latching onto any of the characters and even keeping them straight. However, I did appreciate that the fighting was not a glorification of war, a "look-how-cool-these-guys-are" kind of movie. I don't mind that kind of film (see every Marvel movie ever made) but it would be completely out of place in a serious war film like this.

There were some pretty great moments in the movie that did not involve gunfire, however. My favorite scene was at the end of the movie where the general who commanded the mission goes into the hospital where the wounded are being treated. One man is bleeding so profusely, the blood is running across the floor. The general picks up some rags and kneels down to try to clean up the blood. It's clear that he feels responsibility for what happened and he just wants to do something, since he couldn't go out in the field to try to rescue them. But instead of cleaning up the blood, all he ends up doing is smearing it around, emphasizing just how ineffectual he feels. It's a great touch.

Rating: 3 stars

Overall, if you like war movies, then Black Hawk Down will probably be just right for you. Like I said before, I don't really, so your experience will probably be better than mine. If you don't, this one isn't going to be any different and I'd give it a miss. I read the book a few years ago and found it to be a fascinating story – definitely better than the movie.

Caveat Spectator

It's an R-rated war movie, so it has pretty much the kind of blood that you should expect. The characters don't get a lot of lines, but most of those are profanity. Fortunately, a decent amount is almost unintelligible given the amount of gunfire going on.