Now, I like to bitch a lot about character development and strength of story as well as make up basic rules for what I feel should be the "fucking duh's" of a genre however it's relatively hard to do with a war movie because there's so many ways to do them right and not a lot of ways to do it wrong (unless it's Basic which just rapes your brain at the end and then laughs at it while it tries to sit down and process what the fuck it just went through). In the case of war movies, some like to take the hidden anti-war message approach. Some like to take the "fuck you, this is why war is important" approach. Some focus on the heroes, some on the battles and many mix these together. Black Hawk Down doesn't waste any time with this and focuses on one simple thing: survival. Fuck the backstory of the soldiers, fuck the "I'm gonna miss my family" bullshit…just get the fuck out of the city. Sounds good.
Taking place in Somalia, Black Hawk Down tells the tale of the covert operation initiated to capture a powerful African rebel leader and the shit show that occurred when the plan went to hell. The hours that followed were some of the most treacherous, most seemingly impossible moments I have ever witnessed in a war movie as it was a group of soldiers who expected and planned for a quick "in-and-out" 30 minute mission, and got a 24 hour fuck fest of bullets without the ammo to satisfy an entire city of rebels that were looking for action. This is not a story about an impossible victory; this is a story about an impossible survival.
Black Hawk does an expert job of creating a hopeless situation, like one out of a video game except if you get shot a hundred times, you don't get to wait behind a wall for five seconds and you're fixed again. Even if that were the case in real life, it wouldn't have lasted here because every bunker and "safe haven" just happened to have a rocket launcher pointing at it. It's like the creators said "Hey, you know "Gears of War"? Yeah, fuck that game. This isn't going to be anything like that. We need more rocket launchers."
It's nice to be able to appreciate the difficulty of what soldiers go through when they're actually in the heat of battle during what feels like a hopeless situation. Too many times is it clouded by emotion and fear of what the world would lose if that soldier were to die, or what his family would feel on hearing the words of his sacrifice. Black Hawk Down focuses your attention on what's important that very second: what would happen to the guy next to you if you're not around to cover him. Because when the bullets whiz by, the fact that you're a teacher, or a chef, or looking for redemption, or forgiveness doesn't mean a thing, and this film doesn't make you feel guilty for not being concerned over such matters. It is heartfelt and true to its cause.
Sadly, I can't say that this is a perfect movie. Despite the intense action and great concept, I struggled with the fact that Black Hawk Down never really understood its surroundings. This was a battle arena filled with women and children, blanketed in the intense heat of the African sun, yet environment and the idea of a stray bullet never came into play here. These men planned for a half hour worth of work and that only seemed to affect their ammo, which it did for about half a minute. It just seemed a little lazy to me that the climate meant nothing, poor preparation meant nothing, innocents meant nothing, and perhaps that's me not acknowledging that "in the heat of battle, the body can withstand amazing things" but then why not reference that instead of getting us SO lost in the action that we forget about reality. It's the whole "Didn't Jack Bauer ever use the bathroom?" kind of thing.
Despite my bastard pickiness, it was a really good watch. Hearing bullets non-stop for 2 hours gets a little boring and the sheer idea of survival was the only real moment of awe here; there wasn't any creativity and perhaps that's how it went, but you get free reign in a movie to exaggerate a little bit.
This pulls a solid 8 dustbusters out of 10 from me. Really good war movie, but there's better out there.
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