One of the Best War Movies of All Time!

Rating: 10/10 (18 January 2002)

Black Hawk Down is one of the best war movies of all time, but the remarkable thing is that it is a TRUE story!
People complain that the visuals are wrong, or the lines that the actors say during the battle is laughable, but how do they know? Were they there? Granted, artistic licence has a part, but, by all accounts, this is a very real account of what happened in October 1993.
Those people that say they couldn't care less which characters died have not taken into account that it was real people that were killed, and the actors are just showing the audience what happened.
Anyway, back to the film. This is about a mission that I would class as a successful failure (the objective was completed, but too many good men lost their lives for no reason at all). The whole movie was really tense, and, even though I had read the book before seeing this movie, I was really shocked at the way some of the Rangers were killed, and amazed at the courage of the two Delta snipers (Shughart and Gordon) who dropped in on their own to protect Durant's crash site against crowds of Somalies. No wonder these two men were awarded the Medal of Honor! The film, for its length of 144 minutes, was basically a 120 minute running battle, with 20 minutes of build up at the beginning.
The battle was well filmed, and, even though the characters were hard to tell at points, the script was good.
Sure, there were things missed out of the film that were in the book, such as the airdrop of ammo and IV bags, and Mike Durant being forced to make a video, but ultimately, these wouldn't have really made a difference to the film.
Don't believe these so-called 'professional' reviewers in newspapers. I read a review this morning where the reviewer kept talking about a film that was 10 minutes shorter than the real movie, and he mentioned things that were not in either the book or the movie.
I recommend that you make up your own mind about this movie, but don't go to see it is you don't like too much blood and gore. I give this film 10/10, and a place in my DVD collection when it comes out!