Hands down, the best COMBAT movie ever made!

Rating: 10/10 (24 July 2008)

**SPOILERS AHEAD** The reason I said, COMBAT movie, instead of WAR MOVIE, is the perceptions that we, as Americans, have sown over many, many wars. We tend to think of wars as being either noble or ignoble, just or unjust, and won or lost. For the people who serve in the military, there is none of this lofty pretense about why they fight.
Two of the more memorable lines in the film could have been made very kitschy, as is the typical style of Hollywood filmmakers. Unlike the war films of the 40's and 50's, BLACK HAWK DOWN is not a "feel good" movie that paints heroes in all white, and villains in all black. Unlike wear movies in the 60's and 70's, there isn't any internal angst about "Why we're here." Unlike the movies of the 80's and 90's, BHD does not present gratuitous graphic violence, and does not try to shock you with the "horrows of war." And, unlike "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN," BHD is not weighted down by the star power of its cast, or the creds of the Director, or the cheesy -- yes, cheesy way it tries to portray the "fog of war,such as when Tom Hank's" character is temporarily rendered deaf by an explosion.
In fact, there is a comparable seen in which two soldiers are pinned down, and attempting to cover each other as they reload. One soldier turns to his buddy and says, "Quit firing that thing so close to my head," and, not more than a few seconds later, his buddy sees Somalis approaching from that side, and fires his automatic weapon right next to his head, and the other guy goes deaf.
With anybody else at the helm instead of Ridley Scott, we would have gotten the now overdone, "muffled silence," a la SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. b(There was a scene in BHD where Scott did hit the "mute button," but it was only done as a means of creating the POV.
I've been in a similar situation, standing next to a cannon, and being deafened momentarily. When that happens to you, you do exactly what the soldier did in BHD: you have a dazed, wide-eyed look on your face, and start screaming because you cannot hear your4self speak.
Soldiers rely on all six senses (five + intuition) when on the battlefield, and losing one's hearing can be catastrophic. Rangers and Delta force are trained to use hand signals to maintain silence, but the chaos of the battle in "Mog" as they called it, rendered that skill superfluous. BHD handled these scenes rather well.
What makes this both a poignant and believable scene is that no soldier ever stops to think about, "Gee, I'd better stop firing my weapon near his head," when he's got unfriendlies coming at them by the hundreds.
And by the hundreds and thousands they came. Not disciplined Somali soldiers, but ever male who was old enough to carry a gun in a society where dying for your God in battle was glorified above all else.
When you're a soldier, and you are alone, cut off from help, your first thought is to stay alive and your second is to do your job. When you're with one of your fellow's soldier, your first thought is keeping your buddy alive.
This was the second time I had seen BHD, with the fist coming when it opened in theatres. It felt as though I was watching for the first time. The battles are as intense as it gets. What you see is not the typical, unrealistic "scenes where some of the soldiers seem to get through it without a scratch.
Not in BHD-- EVERY soldier was wounded in battle.
Another realistic scene that most filmmakers ignore, is how often a soldier has to replace an empty ammo clip with a filled one. How many times have we seen guns being fired like they have an endless supply of bullets? Also, BHD doesn't make a seminal scene about it -- none of this slo-mo in watching the empty magazine being released and falling to the ground. As a total opposite of that, Scott not only has the soldiers accurately removing the empty magazine with their dominant hand, and loading in the hew one, BUT ONLY after they tap the FRONT of the magazine with their other hand or against their boot or helmet.
WHY is that important? Because the bullets in a magazine do shift positions in all the movements in battle, and if the back of the bullets are not flush against the back of the magazine, they can jam the gun or misfire.
People who know about weapons appreciate things like that.
The movie wastes no time in getting into the heat of battle, and the scenes are so intense, so graphic, that you may want to wear a mouth guard to keep your teeth from clenching throughout it. Basicially, until the move is over, you don't move an inch because you really do feel like you may, yourself, get shot if you do.
The musical score is superb as Ridley Scott again chose Hans Zimmer, as he did in "Gladiator", to compose it. You may notice the similarities in it with "Gladiator," as well.
All in all, this is a ten out of ten. Not a perfect ten, mind you, but one that earned it the hard way.