Honest & Beautiful

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 2004)

When watching Black Hawk Down, I could not help but observe how honest and beautiful the film was -- portraying, in the beginning, soldiers as how they are (often rowdy and good natured, ready to serve, wanting to serve); a portrayal that you often see, but was done especially well in this film; it takes a lot of the past depictions of war film's portrayal of soldiers and modernizes them, and turns them into something that we can relate to very well.
And above this, it took some painstaking steps to remain true to its' genre of war film through incredibly realistic portrayals of the calamity that is war; there are a few scenes in the film that truly show what war is, and what war can be all about. It had moments that were shocking and quite sad, and it really makes the viewer feel and sympathize with them. And, thank God, it takes no Hollywood side-bar love stories further than they ought to be taken (as in a film called Pearl Harbor).
In addition to this, the film makes a good effort to give historical background to the film and to show Somalia for what it was during this era of warlords. Although the film may not follow history to a T, it certainly follows it enough to give someone a good idea of what was happening so that we can properly understand a conflict that many of us had forgotten about, and that many of us were ill-informed about. So in addition to the very realistic portrayal of war, we see a very realistic portrayal of the event -- something honorable to the sacrifices that were made by those men.
Overall, as far as war films go, this was one of my more favorite films for a very graphic depiction of war as it is, and for a film that was not overly dramatized. The truth was not stretched, no real political message was made to clog the piping of the story/film, it stayed true to its' genre, and the execution of the script was grade A (Ridley Scott directed very well). It was a very honest and beautiful film.