Black Hawk Down

Filed Under: Film, Reviews | Article Tags : DVD review

By: The Dweeb

August 2002

DVD Features

Video: 2.35:1 Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

Black Hawk Down On The Set Featurette
Theatrical Trailers
Filmographies
Animated Menus
Production Notes
Scene Selections

Theatrical release: 2002
DVD released on 6/11/2002 by Sony Pictures
Running time of 144 minutes

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Ewan Bremner, William Fichtner, Ewan McGregor, Sam Shepard, Tom Sizemore

Director: Ridley Scott

Plot: In 1993, an elite group of American Rangers and Delta Force soldiers are sent to Somalia on a critical mission to capture a violent warlord whose corrupt regime has lead to starvation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis. When the mission goes quickly and terribly wrong, the men find themselves outnumbered and literally fighting for their lives.

Following quickly on the heels of the theatrical release, the studio decided to slam this movie right onto DVD, and in its current incarnation I have no idea why. To ride the wave of patriotic films flooding the movie scene these days? I would suspect so, but in reality this was probably planned well in advance of last years events.

The current trend on television is this ‘reality tv’ phase, Black Hawk Down is Ridley Scott’s cinematic contribution to this sort of entertainment. It takes a real life event and turns it into this Hollywood mush, which probably pales in comparison to what really happened.

This film slowly turns into a 144 minute shootout, with small breaks for dialogue sewn in between. The action is nonstop, bullets fly everywhere, and way too many characters to keep track of run for their lives from building to building. This film follows a similar vein to Saving Private Ryan, but with the intensity of D-Day lasting the whole running time of the movie. I think the shock of war has worn off for me, I just kinda got numb sitting there watching the events unfold on screen.

Speaking of Saving Private Ryan, I hope Tom Sizemore doesn’t get himself typecast as a gruff military officer in war movies. He played the same character, all he needed to say was “Get on my ass, and follow me” and we could have switched to the other film in mid chapter.

Nobody really stood out as a character in this film, if that was intentional or not I don’t know, but how could have this been considered an Oscar contender? Not to trivialize the real people involved, but everyone fell into the same old war movie stereotypes. The idealistic young kid (Josh Hartnett), the crabby commander (Tom Sizemore and Sam Shepard), the rogue soldier (Eric Bana), the rookie from the office (Ewan Mcgregor). I’ve seen all these before in countless other war flicks.

Ridley borrowed much from his previous work Gladiator, the editing style and soundtrack were very similar. The film was shot in high contrast, very dark, grainy and moody. The sound was decent for this type of film, but I had to really turn it up to get the bullets flying through the room.

That’s the main problem with this DVD, there’s nothing on it. Its just a barebones release, no commentary track, no deleted scenes, no sound options, basically its like a vhs on disc. The only things included is the crew/actor filmographies, and the ‘Making of’ fluff promo piece. It doesn’t even have the trailers for this film on there, just for other movies. I suspect this will not be the last of Black Hawk Down on DVD, time will tell.

I’d say it was a good movie, but not a fantastic movie. I didn’t invest too much emotion while watching this film, I was gradually turned off. I don’t think that’s what Ridley Scott intended me to do. The problem is that there was no character to really latch on to, nobody stood out. Whether this film did any justice to what really happened I’m not sure, I don’t think anyone would know except for the soldiers who were involved.