like a documentary footage..

Rating: Null/10 (28 July 2005)

Black Hawk Down opens with a quote by Plato: "Only the dead have seen the end of war". Then, over a color-desaturated series of images, we are presented with a brief history of why the United States was in Somalia in the early '90s. The story begins on October 2, 1993. Characters are introduced - Major General William Garrison (Sam Shepard), who is in command of the U.S. military presence in the region; Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett), recently promoted to commanding a team; Company Clerk John Grimes (Ewan McGregor), who is about to exchange paperwork for a gun; Lt. Colonel Danny McKnight (Tom Sizemore), in charge of a segment of the ground troops; and Master Sergeant Paul Howe (William Fichtner), who will challenge orders if he thinks they are ill-advised. Together, these men, and many others, are about to become involved in a seemingly routine mission that will go disastrously wrong. ........The objective is to capture several key advisers to Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the warlord who controls Mogadishu. The United States wants Aidid out of the way, and this seems to be the best opportunity to advance that goal. But the troops, both on the ground and in the air, encounter stiffer resistance than expected, and this results in the downing of two black hawk helicopters. The ground troops then become divided as the raid turns into a rescue mission, and, in part because of poor planning and in part because of bad luck, the fire fight turns into a debacle.
....It is informative, a history lesson on Somalia that many of us needed. The film is visually brilliant, a spectacular dose of reality that made me repeatedly say, "How did they do that? No wait, how did they do that?" I cannot stress this point enough. "Black Hawk Down" makes you believe you are watching a documentary or live CNN war footage by one of those crazy reporters. It has that much gritty authenticity. ....the film is more about the incident than it is about the people fighting the battles. It relies too much on action and battles, in my opinion, instead of getting to the heart of the matter, the humans involved in this slaughter. There are so many U.S. military personnel involved in this failed mission that we never really know who any of them are...