Ridley Scott's magnificent epic of yet another fiasco US war intervention

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2016)

Another sobering film of Americans fighting unwinnable wars in a foreign land wasting lives of civilians and American soldiers. Like Vietnam was Nixon's bleeding baby, this disastrous raid in Somalia to unseat a dictator was Bill Clinton's. Not forgetting other fiascoes of Soviet-Afghan war, Lybia, Iraq, Afghanistan and the list will no doubt lengthen with time since the US never seem to learn.
Politics aside, Black Hawk Down is stunning shock and awe film by legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott. Of huge epic production, the film show the full might of the US equipment and firepower. Body injuries with blood spurting from femoral arteries and severed body parts were too real for comfort. Although better equipped, the white US soldiers were hugely outnumbered by the Somalian 'skinnies'that relentless attacked in guerrilla style and would win in the end by sheer numbers and relentless determination. Seeing the black Somalians crawling and rushing at the white American soldiers, it was strangely reminiscent of another Ridley Scott's Aliens. The masses of blood thirsty aliens attacking the outnumbered Ripley and his US crew fighting in on a foreign asteroid far from home.
Some scenes were just beautiful and weirdly reminiscent of Coppola's Apocalypse like the fleet of military choppers flying over panoramic stretches of the beaches and ocean into the war zone of Mogadishu. Director Scott told the fiasco story of Black Hawk Down in his typical style of detailed accuracy and hugely epic dimensions with loudly rousing music score of Hans Zimmer. Some of the body dismembering and appendages dismembering scenes of blood jet fountains were no less shocking than Spielberg's Normandy beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, only less sustained and intense. The most thrilling part of the film for me was the star studded cast giving fantastic performances. Josh Hartnett took centre stage and gave a sensitive unforgettable portrayal of competent young sergeant yet compassionate over the injuries and deaths of men under him. Like a child in a candy shop, there were also many other eye candies but lesser billed actors in the film. They were no less amazing, such as the future GOT bad boy Jamie Lannister or Niholaj Costa-Waldau, the coffee perfecting making obsessed Ewan McGregor, future Entourage star Jeremy Preven, the mercenary and highly effective soldier Eric Bana and the capable medic Tye Burrell. At the end of film, we learned that at least 1000 Somalians and 19 American soldiers. Different folks in USA would probably take different sides for sure in the light of on going racial tensions in the country. For all the fiasco wars US got their fingers in, chickens are coming home to roost.