Gritty Urban Warfare

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2002)

Black Hawk Down: a movie that never should have been made. It depicts the ugliest possible victory in battle: the attackers extremely unprepared, yet with vastly superior training and coordination they take heavy losses and somehow don't fail. Does it work as a movie? It's a full two hours of carnage. The tension builds from the beginning. Certain political and ideological motifs run through much of the movie, but fizzle out into exhaustion. These events led (unfairly) to years of my blind hatred for President Clinton. I don't understand how Americans will pay to see Kalashnikovs ripping into GIs. This was front page news a mere 9 years ago. There is always a gap between what people think war is about and how things really are. How do you rationalize the indiscriminate brutality? Put it on film. I'll watch.