powerful and

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2002)

I loved "Black Hawk Down." I loved everything about it, the fact that it was exactly everything it wanted to be, and didn't go over the top in any way and shove down our throats how to feel about it in a certain way. It gave us a great perspective on what the ordeal was like for the Americans, with just the right amount of moments to draw the audience's emotion out for the characters. It was pretty much the best war movie I have ever seen in terms of making the viewer really feel like he/she was there to experience it. It started out, after giving sufficient background on the conflict in Somalia, feeling like "The Thin Red Line," where we get to meet all the characters - in this case U.S. soldiers - and see what they are like before thrusting them into battle. This goes on just long enough for us to like and appreciate them and feel for them later in the movie. Once the action starts, it goes nonstop to the end of the film and all important events are shown in such good detail and so efficiently that the audience knows everything that is happening, without being confused for the most part. There are great performances by all the actors, making their characters seem very genuine, and the technical work is just flawless, making the location seem so real and, as I said before, almost as if you were there. I'll say 9.5 out of 10, rounding up to 10 for the rating scale.